OPANDA · Opera Fandom in the Digital Age

Opera Fandom in the Digital Age

Opera hinges on audience participation. Throughout history, opera audiences have shaped theatrical spaces, cultural policies and communication networks, influencing production models, canons, and even politics. Despite their significance, however, opera fans have been largely understudied. Situated at the intersection of musicology, sociology and media studies, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action OPANDA (Opera Fandom in the Digital Age) has pioneered the study of contemporary opera fans, including their digital practices and communities. Challenging received ideas of inert spectatorship, OPANDA has revealed how opera lovers may defy established cultural practices, norms of behaviours and hierarchies in a hyper-mediatised society in which the divide between stage and screen is constantly blurred. Based at La Sapienza University of Rome, OPANDA has benefited from a training-focused secondment at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre in Melbourne and a dissemination-focused secondment at the Music Department of Yale University. OPANDA’s scholars have been chosen for their excellent track record and for the complementarity of their expertise, ranging from sociology of art and opera studies to fan studies and digital ethnography. Three research and innovation objectives (ROs) have been pursued. RO1. To map the impact of digital media in shaping the practices, discourses and interactions of opera fans via a digital ethnography of a measurable set of web communities, forums and fanzines devoted to opera in Italy, France and the US. RO2. To analyse how opera fans physically experience operatic locations and performative events via short fieldwork periods in three opera companies: Teatro alla Scala (Milan), Paris Opera and the Metropolitan Opera (the Met, New York). RO3. To analyse the evolving intersections between cyber-fandom (online) and traditional fan behaviour (offline) in relation to opera. OPANDA has also highlighted the role of opera fan communities in producing and sometimes resisting dominant gender models. Throughout the research process, attention has been given to trajectories and discursive strategies of potentially discriminated users (e.g. women, LGBTQ+ opera fans) and other marginalised groups. This analysis has shown how gender identities, ethnic backgrounds, physical abilities and economic status impact fan practices and sway media discourses.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union