Workshops
The Network of the Musical Theatre Companies in the Multilingual East-Central Europe. An Essentially International Genre and Its Repertoire in the Service of Nation–building. (Sources and Common Methods in the Processing of the Historical Source-material. Budapest, HAS Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities
Instead of the one workshop stipulated in the proposal we organised three meetings with the research group. The goal of the workshops were the preparation and creation of the outputs (designing the databases, discussion concerning the articles in the publications, and the lecture recital), and to get familiar with each other’s academic achievements in order to lay foundations for a collaboration concentrating on the study of the history of the region’s musical theatre. Beside the V4 participants, we had a guest researcher of the project, Tatjana Markovič (Vienna, University of Music and Performing Arts), who alongside presenting her paper as it was stipulated, also took active part in all three meetings, participated in designing the databases, complemented the lecture recital and the virtual exhibition with Serbian-Croatian material, and expressed her wish to remain part of the future collaboration.
The aim of the open workshops organized in Budapest by the Department for Hungarian Music History of the Institute for Musicology, RCH, HAS was to deepen cooperation launched under the project and the discussion of topics formulated in the framework of the project. Three workshops were held during the project. The first workshop was on the 26th—28th March 2018. This way we had a six month period at our disposal to clarify by online consultation the occurring issues and to prepare the meeting and the thematic concert. The workshop included the following: 1) short introduction of the members, discussion on bibliography and source databases, 2) planning the concert program (meeting with Ingrid Kertesi soprano), 3) planning the next workshop and the future of the project (directions of expanding the research field). During the three days, the guests visited the Music collection of the National Széchényi Library. Issues raised at the workshop were: (1) the sources of musical theatre in the period of 1870–1920 and their processing; (2) the regional network: touring ensembles, repertoire, music trade; (3) the output of the project: discussion on structure of the regional source database, the concept of the publication concluding the project, the plans of a complex database of musical theatre to be elaborated as the continuation of the project. The second workshop was held on the 28th—29th of May 2018, Budapest, Hungary. The program was the following: (1) presentations of the project participants (the abstracts are available here); (2) scientific presentation held by Tatjana Markovič, the external lecturer invited to the workshop (“The Network of the Music Theatrical Companies in the West-Balkan Countries”), (3) discussions (databases, publications and the preparatory work of the lecture recital); (4) meeting and consultation with the IT manager of the databases; (5) attending an opera performance fitting in the V4 theme (Béla Bartók: A kékszakálló herceg vára/Bluebeard’s Castle) at the Hungarian State Opera, Erkel Theatre. The presentations and lectures themed around the circulation and the routes of the musical repertoire in the East-Central European region: theoretical questions related to the repertoire were discussed (e.g. establishing national theatres, national movements, regionalism), furthermore they reported on the situation of the source material and its processing. The third workshop was on the 18th—19th June 2018. This mainly included discussions about the databases and publications. It was decided at this discussion that instead of a planned short project report issue we close the project with a smaller book with publications, and we also layed out the virtual exhibition using the material of the lecture recital for the website of the project, and negotiated about the possible forms of the further common project. The workshop was followed by the lecture recital: “The Operatic Industry in East-Central Europe (1870–1920). An Essentially International Genre and Its Repertoire in the Service of Nation-building” in the Bartók Hall of the HAS Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities. The aria recital delivered by Ingrid Kertesi (soprano) and Tamás Kéry (piano), with the brief lectures by the participants of the project and the guest scholar Tatjana Markovič about the compositions included into the programme. The lecture recital was successful, which was underlined by the multilingualism of the brief presentations and the selected arias. The V4 feature of the night was emphasized by the bilingualism of the brief presentations, which were read out on the language of the V4 country and also in Hungarian language. The audience was informed about our project from the PowerPoint presentations, the brochure of the project in English and the program guide in Hungarian.