Research

Research Areas: Interartistic Approaches to Hispanic Literature (Literature, Music, Society, and Performance); Transatlantic Studies; and Intersections of Research and Teaching.

My current research focuses on Hispanic literature, from both Spain and Spanish America, rewritten and adapted as libretti for musical-dramatic performance by writers, librettists, and composers. I study how collaborators on these projects transformed literary works into musico-dramatic performances, their particular views on literature, text, and music in their artistic creations, and position them within wider cultural debates on zarzuela and opera. My work shows that writers, librettists, and composers used works of zarzuela and opera based on literature to reflect on some of the most significant social and political issues linked to nation-state building in the Hispanic World. As performances directed toward the theater-going public, I also trace the travel trajectories of the works under study, as well as their reception in the Spanish-speaking world.