Greetings

Welcome to this new blog. Having finished a doctorate in musicology at Oxford University, I need some kind of project to while away the time between sending out applications for academic jobs. This will be a rather free-flowing blog, with various posts on music, film, theatre, philosophy, or whatever else I feel like writing about. As with most blogs, this is all about self-indulgence. It's a bonus if anyone else takes an interest in what I've got to say. I welcome comments and arguments (preferably civil, though I don't mind a little vitriol from time to time).

My doctoral dissertation is called 'Monteverdi on the Modern Stage', and it deals with the modern performance history of Monteverdi's operas (the three extant ones: L'Orfeo, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and L'incoronazione di Poppea). Monteverdi is therefore at the centre of my interests, but they shoot off in all sorts of directions from our Cremonese hero to take in the philosophy and ontology of performance, the effects of audio/visual recording, opera aesthetics, dramaturgy, performance practice, seventeenth-century arts, twentieth-century arts, linguistics, film, etc. So enjoy!