Examining Parisian opera wins a top award for a Southampton academic
Mark Everist, Professor of Music, has won a prestigious US music award for a book examining the vibrant music, theatre and culture of Paris in the years 1830-1914.
Together with his collaborator Annegret Fauser from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he received the Ruth A Solie award from the American Musicological Society at its annual meeting.
Opera and musical theatre dominated French culture in the 1800s, and the influential stage music that emerged from this period helped make Paris, as Walter Benjamin put it, the 'capital of the nineteenth century'. Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris 1830-1914 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009) explores the diverse institutions that shaped Parisian music and extended its influence across Europe, America and Australia.
Mark contributed a chapter on Jacques Offenbach which highlighted how he successfully attempted to appropriate works from earlier composers such as Mozart, Weber and Rossini to lend credibility to the emergent genre of opérette.
Each year, the Ruth A. Solie Award honours a collection of musicological essays of exceptional merit published during the previous year in any language and in any country.