Conference: Making Gender in Opera: East Meets West

Name: Conference: Making Gender in Opera: East Meets West
Start: 2025-12-12T09:30:00+0000
End: 2025-12-12T09:30:00+0000

Friday 12 December 2025

Book here!

Tickets £30 for general admission (£20 for student admission)

This international conference explores gender, performance, and theatricality through a comparative lens on opera and theatre traditions across the world. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, this conference examines how gender is constructed, embodied, and represented on the operatic stage, from early European opera to contemporary Asian theatre forms.

Hosted at the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford, the two-day event features research papers and roundtable discussions engaging with themes of performance, identity, and cross-cultural exchange. Topics include cross-gender performance, voice and embodiment, opera anthropology, global theatrical aesthetics, and the politics of representation. It aims to foster dialogue between musicology, ethnomusicology, gender studies, and theatre research, offering an inclusive platform for interdisciplinary exchange.

Open to scholars, students, artists, and the general public, "Making Gender in Opera: East Meets West" invites audiences to experience opera as a global and evolving art form that bridges cultural traditions and redefines understandings of gender and performance.

Download the full programme

Programme

Friday 12 December

10.00-11.00	Session 1	Haili Ma (University of Leeds), 'The 'Perfect' Gender Making through Tao: the case of Chinese All-female Yue Opera' Bette Zhaoyi Yan (University of Oxford), 'The Magic of In-Between: Cross-Gender Performance and Gendered Selfhood in Chinese Opera on the Contemporary Stage'
11.00-11.30	Tea break
11.30-13.00	Session 2	Getong Feng (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), 'Reinterpretations of Turandot in Contemporary German-Speaking Director's Opera: A Case Study of Productions by Philipp Stölzl, Claus Guth and Marie-Eve Signeyrole' Jiadong Zhang (University College, London), 'Neither Adaptation Nor Re-staging: A Re-examination of S. I. Hsiung's Translation and Direction of Lady Precious Stream' Mridula Sharma (University of Manchester), 'Reimagining Gender Through Class Precarity: La Bohème on the 2025 British Stage'
13.00-14.00	Lunch
14.00-15.00	Session 3	Suzanne Aspden (University of Oxford), 'Operatic Verisimilitude and Gender Non-Conformity in 18th-century Opera' Rasa Murauskaitė (University of Cambridge), 'Representing the changing discourse on gender in Lithuanian contemporary opera: The case of the comic-strip opera Alpha'
15.00-15.30	Tea break
15.30-17.00	Session 4	Roundtable discussion: Orientalism in (Western) scholarship and gender stereotypes in (Eastern) opera, led by Bette Zhaoyi Yan and William Want (University of Oxford)

Saturday 14 December

10.00-11.00	Session 5	Ashley Thorpe (Royal Holloway University of London) ' "Deeds Not Words": Gender Performance and the Possibility of Its Subversion in Japanese and English-language Nō' Jad Orphée Chami, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)) 'Sing Like a Man! From the Haute-Contre to Oum Kalthoum: Gender, Listening, and the Politics of the Liminal Voice Across Musical Traditions'
11.00-11.30	Tea break
11.30-12.30	Session 6	Performance: Jin Zhao (visiting performance artist) Roundtable on performance: Josette Bushell-Mingo (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), Bette Zhaoyi Yan, William Want

Call for Volunteers

We are looking for volunteers to support this international conference: helping to welcome speakers and guests into the building, directing them to the Faculty spaces, and using your card to assist them through secure doors. In return, you will have the rare opportunity to meet and speak with leading scholars and artists in this field coming from institutions such as the University of Cambridge, University of Hamburg, LMU Munich, UQAM Montréal, Royal Holloway, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University College London, Leeds, Manchester, and others. When the sessions are running smoothly and things are quiet, you will be able to engage with the speakers, hear their ideas, and immerse yourself in rich conversations about gender, performance, and opera across East and West. If you are interested in joining us, please email zhaoyi.yan@regents.ox.ac.uk. Thanks!

Intermezzo Chamber Choir Summer Concert

05 September

The Intermezzo choir will be singing "Songs of Resistance", including eye-opening music from or about the oppressed and unfortunate in South Africa, Haiti, Ireland, the American south, Soviet-occupied Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia, and of course ancient Babylon.

Music in the (sub-)Arctic

07 September to 08 September

Oxford University Open Days

18 September

Tchaikovsky Recitals with Julian Chan

18 September

Join us on Friday evening for our Open Day concert at 6pm where Julian will be performing Tchaikovsky on our Steinway Grand.

Q&A and Recital with Professor Martyn Harry

19 September

Professor Harry will be giving a talk that will feature music throughout, followed by an audience Q&A.

Quantum Universe: Less than Nothing, More than Everything

25 September

Pianist, composer, author and quantum musician Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin discusses his recent books.