This book explores multicultural representation in western European operatic genres in the modern world. It reveals approaches to reflecting identity, transmitting meaning, and inspiring creation, and the ambiguities of cultural values and practices that occur across the time and place(s) of performance. In theorizing coloniality through intercultural exchange in opera, essays explore topics that involve immigrant, indigenous, exoticist, and other cultural representations. The book offers a more integrated understanding of the interdisciplinary fields inherent in opera, including musicology, sociology, anthropology, and others in Theatre, Gender, and Cultural Studies.

Introduction: Opera, Multiculturalism, and Coloniality Mary I. Ingraham, Joseph K. So, and Roy Moodley Part I: Opera as Tradition 1. Jazz, Opera, and the Ideologies of Race Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon 2. Blacks and Blackface at the Opera Robin Elliott 3. From Chinatown Opera to The First Emperor: Racial Imagination, the Trope of "Chinese Opera" and New Hybridity Nancy Yunhwa Rao 4. The Other Within: Negotiating Musical Citizenship in Canadian Opera Mary Ingraham 5. Playing the Race Card: Anti-Semitism and Wagner® Nicholas Vazsonyi Part II: Critical Case Studies 6. Joseph Haydn's Judaizing of the Apothecary-Take 2 Caryl Clark 7. Strauss and Racial Science Sander L. Gilman 8. Their Meister's Voice: Nazi Reception of Richard Wagner and His Works in the Völkischer Beobachtez David B. Dennis 9. Returning to Where She Didn't Come From: Turandot on the Chinese Stage Josh Stenberg 10. Reflections on a Most Unusual Parsifal: Bayreuth and Christoph Schlingensief Frances Henry 11. Racism and Sexism: Melodies that Continue to Soar on the Operatic Landscape Wallace Cheatham Part III: Opera in the Real World 12. Jazzing Up Opera: A Defence of Québécité George Elliott Clarke 13. Voices from the Gallery: Perceptions, Perspectives and Pleasures of the Opera Audience Deanna Davis, Joseph K. So, and Roy Moodley 14. Constructing Operatic Racism in Postmodern Cultural Studies Frances Henry and Carol Tator