Translation is a necessity to give American audiences access to the interaction between words and music that gives opera its amazing emotional power, but the field typically fails to adequately address the translation of the repertoire being performed. Join us on Sunday, March 27 for Generation NOW: Opera Translation and Audience Engagement as scholar and educator Dr. Lily Kass explores the history of opera translation, examining what it means to translate opera and the reasons why operas are translated. The session will then offer suggestions for how, through thoughtful and ethical translation practices, translations can continue to serve an integral role in bringing opera to new audiences.

Event accessibility: Automatic captioning provided; run time approximately 1 hour. A captioned video recording will be available on Opera NexGen's YouTube channel following the event.

More on Lily Kass

PhD, Music Historian

Lily Kass is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator whose work focuses on the diverse ways in which operas are reimagined, adapted, and translated to meet the needs of new audiences. She earned an A.B. in Literature from Harvard University in 2010, and a PhD in Musicology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017.

Lily currently teaches Musicology courses at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and she has also taught at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and West Chester University. Her courses, which include “Powerful Women in Opera,” “Mozart’s Operas,” and “Exoticism on the Musical Stage,” seek to empower students to engage creatively with the operatic canon through research, analysis, and critique.

In the Fall of 2021, Lily was named Opera Philadelphia’s first Scholar in Residence. In this role, she provides context for the works performed by the company through program notes, adult education lectures, and educational materials for schoolchildren. She has also given pre-performance lectures for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

Lily has presented her research nationally and internationally. She is currently working on an article about how English-language translations of The Magic Flute approach the subject of race.

Lily is a trained coloratura soprano, and she co-founded the opera scenes program at the University of Pennsylvania, which she directed from 2014-2018. She currently serves as a Marian Anderson Scholar Artist with the National Marian Anderson Museum and Historical Society and as a member of Opera NexGen’s Advisory Board.

Learn more about Lily’s work and get in touch on her website: Lilykassphd.com