South African Opera and Globalisation (1994-2022)

Online Symposium, University of Bern

The online symposium and workshop is dedicated to the developments of the opera market in South Africa since democratisation, with a special focus on globalisation. It follows up on the symposium South African Opera Productions after the Apartheid at the University of Bayreuth in 2018.

In recent decades, not only have opera singers and directors made careers as individuals outside South Africa, but entire opera productions and concert formats have also toured successfully in the Global West. From a structural point of view the following questions are open to discussion: What new trends are emerging in consequence of the pandemic? Have digital formats changed the market in South Africa and outside South Africa? Are opera singers and opera companies now even more reliant than before on performing outside South Africa as cultural funding has dried up, or is this trend diminishing? And what role do universities play today as performance venues for opera in South Africa? Notwithstanding the above the international opera industry has been going through numerous transformation processes (institutionally and aesthetically) for some years now due to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Are these processes comparable to South Africa or do we find other thematic focuses and motivations for transformation in South Africa? Is Blackness also being renegotiated in South Africa through the #BlackLivesMatter movement? Have issues of democracy become even more prominent in opera productions in recent years? How is South African identity recently being negotiated in South African operas? 

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