Research by Erin K. Bryan selected for national poster presentation

Research by Erin K. Bryan, assistant professor of music and voice area coordinator, has been selected for a poster paper presentation at the 2022 National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Conference in Chicago in July.

The research is on the final Neapolitan operas of Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774). While many of the composer’s instrumental pieces are performed today, his works for voice remain largely overlooked, unedited and unaddressed, Bryan says.

“In particular, the late soprano opera arias of Niccolò Jommelli merit presence in current Western musical dialogue, as the composer’s advances with form and texture demonstrate a rich and revolutionary palette of text expression,” she says. “Of the nine operas penned during Jommelli’s final years in Naples, only a handful exist in modern editions. While an easy conclusion would be that this music is simply neither beautiful nor remarkable enough to warrant editing, another possibility is that initial negative reviews, geographic preferences, and myriad political and musicological circumstances have rendered these works nearly obsolete for over two centuries.”

Bryan has created modern piano/vocal editions of four contrasting soprano arias extracted from previously unedited scores. She says these “will allow sopranos to branch out from the safe familiarity of the 18th-century operas already in the vocal canon.”