Research Projects, PUBLICATIONS and Collaborations

Reconsidering Savoyard Wedding Festivites in light of scenographic documents

In April 2024 I presented research at the conference Il secolo di Mercedes Viale Ferrero. La scenografia, la musica, l’arte e le feste hosted by the University of Turin and the Teatro Reggio Tornio. I demonstrated that the manuscripts made to commemorate seventeenth-century court ballets while fascinating, detailed and allusive, do not give us a very precise picture of court performance in Turin. This is mainly due to the exact copies of stage scenes from other artists which post-date the performances of the ballets, thus implying that some of the images in the manuscripts cannot possibly depict what was performed on stage in Turin. With this discovery, we must question to what extent other aspects of performance, such as the costumes and gestures, as displayed in the manuscripts were simply invented and imagined. My findings will be published in a forthcoming volume.

HABSBURG encounters with Native america

In June 2023 at the conference Habsburg Encounters with Native America, hosted by the Botstiber Institute and the University of Innsbruck, I presented research on how Indigenous peoples of the Americans were depicted in Habsburg performance and festival culture between 1500-1700. My paper will be published in a volume on the topic of Habsburg/Native American Encounters by Central European University Press in 2024.

Master Drawings 2022 Ricciardi Prize

My article entitled, Copy or Coincidence? Pietro Righini and the Bibiena Legacy was selected for publication in Master Drawings Volume 60, Issue 2 and awarded the Ricciardi Prize for best article from a young scholar.

Watch me present the findings of my article at the 2023 Master Drawings Symposium in New York:

Depicitons of the OTTOman in 17th-18th century European opera

Ongoing research project which began with funding from the Beinecke Library at Yale in the form of a Beinecke Library Graduate Research Fellowship and is now the topic of my PhD at the University of Vienna. This project focuses on representations of othered characters, mainly Ottomans, in early opera, especially in stage and costume design.

art-es: Il pomo d’oro & Winter Delights

I have been collaborating with the Theatermuseum in Vienna on various projects since 2015. As part of the Art-es digital exhibitions series, I worked with curator Daniela Franke on English translations for her animated retelling of Il pomo d’oro, one of the largest and most important operas of the Baroque period. While the entire opera took roughly ten hours over two days, the 30-minute animated summary can be watched below.

I also completed English translations and voice over for curator Monika Kurzel-Runtscheiner’s Art-es piece Winter Delights: Sleigh Ride at the Viennese Court.