Season 4, Episode 5

Naomi André is one of the most important scholars of opera today, best known for her landmark 2018 book Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. But the study of opera and race is not where Professor Andre’s career began: her path through musicology has been incredibly fraught, because of who she is, and what she wanted to do as a scholar. This week’s conversation is difficult but necessary, for registering how exclusionary the field of musicology once was, and what work still has to be done.

Naomi André is David G. Frey Distinguished Professor at UNC Chapel Hill.

If you’re interested in learning more about Dr. André’s work, check out:

• The 2018 book Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement with University of Illinois Press
• The 2006 book Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early-Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera with Indiana University Press
• The 2020 colloquy “Shadow Culture Narratives: Race, Gender, and American Music Historiography” in the Journal of the American Musicological Society
• The 2022 article “Interlocking Themes: American Music, Race, and Music Scholarship” in American Music

Sound Expertise is hosted by Will Robin (@seatedovation), and produced by D. Edward Davis (@warmsilence). Please subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and/or Spotify. Questions or comments? Email soundexpertise00 @ gmail

A written transcript of this episode is available here; thanks to Andrew Dell’Antonio for volunteering to prepare transcripts for the show!