RESEARCH PROJECTS
The Finnish Opera Company (1873–1879) from a Microhistorical Perspective: Performance Practices, Multiple Narrations, and Polyphony of Voices.
Funded by Academy of Finland with 500.000€ for 1.1.2010–31.2.2013,
Responsible leader: professor Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam (Sibelius Academy, DocMus)
Other researchers: Ulla-Britta Broman-Kananen, Pentti Paavolainen and Ilona Pikkanen
Location: Sibelius Academy, DocMus
This interdisciplinary research project studies the activity within The Finnish Opera Company (FOC; Suomalaisen teaterin laulusosasto) by focusing on Karl and Emilie Bergbom, Emmy and L.N. Achté and Ida Basilier. The extensive research material consists of their personal papers and letters housed by public archives. Methodologically this project draws from four main directions: biographic research and life-writing, microhistory, the genetic study of performance, and politics of narrating. The practical execution of the project involves individual enterprises (articles, monographs, letter anthologies) as well as a jointly executed article and a project anthology. Funding is applied for 1.1.2010–31.12.2013 for three salaried researchers and one salaried research assistant. The project leader receives her funding from Sibelius Academy.
Membership in the FOC was not only an opportunity for an artistic enactment in the emergent Finnish Opera, it also brought along a political ideology cultivated by the Fennomans. Fennomanic strategy governs also the authoritative history of the FOC, Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä’s Suomalaisen teatterin historia I–IV (hence: EAH, 1906–1910), the second volume of which (1907) narrates the history of Finnish Opera. By deconstructing EAH through microhistorical submersions, the project contributes to the re-interpretation of the early phases of Fennomania.
In the practice of our research FOC is regarded as an activity that is constantly forming itself, without any clear-cut institutional or temporal boundaries (cf. Revel). This kind of microhistorical approach permeates all the sub-studies of the project. When focusing on the creating of performances our methodological frame is the genetic study of performance (Thomasseau; Féral), which concerns processes of creating productions rather than analyzing completed mises-en-scene. Our methodological innovation regarding the genetic study of performance is to introduce biographical material, particularly the tight network of letters, to the documentary production material (scores, sketches, prompt-books etc.). Our intention is to enhance the primacy of individual voices within the FOC and become sensitive to the many ways voice may become embodied and gendered in our research. One obvious case is the singers’ voices, the most important commodity in the opera company. But in this project voice is not regarded only as an object, it is also regarded as pertaining to subjectivity, a metaphor for selfhood, experienced and lived-through by the individuals, not only performers, as suggested in their correspondence. Extensive correspondences create a host of individual voices, transforming themselves in the course of time. We are interested in enhancing these transformations as contributing to the life-writing.
At a general level, this research project will produce new knowledge about a crucial transition period in the 19th Century Finnish society and a new analysis of the FOC as a discontinuous and controversial project rather than as a coherent and cohesive institution. It sheds new light on the history of the FOC but also on the persons involved in making this history happen. It combines various research materials in a new and unconventional manner and thus brings overlooked and marginal details under multiple exposures.