Opera Meets New Media - Interview with Christy Thomas Adams

The exhibition “Opera Meets New Media” presented by Bertelsmann was put together by an international team of curators comprised of Gabriele Dotto (principal curator), Christy Thomas Adams, and Ellen Lockhart. It tells the story of the extraordinary symbiosis of commercial activity and artistic creation already practiced by Puccini and his publisher, Casa Ricordi, in the last century. It traces the rapid rise of sound recordings and film as competitors for opera theaters and the traditional business of music publishers. Other topics include the new, modern, and efficient marketing strategies developed by Casa Ricordi to market its opera repertoire, the “branding” of the publishing house’s most successful composer and its globally expanding business. Exhibits and installations also tell of the challenges of the then new media for existing copyright law and the exploitation of performing rights. “Opera Meets New Media” was made possible by the extensive holdings of the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which belongs to Bertelsmann, with artifacts relating to Puccini’s operas published by Ricordi, supplemented by letters, business documents, composition registers, publications and many other contemporary testimonies.
Christy Thomas Adams is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on the intersection of Italian opera and new media technologies in the early 20th century, including performance and mediation. Her monograph on Casa Ricordi’s involvement with sound recording and silent film in the first decades of the 20th century will soon be published by Oxford University Press. She has also published various articles and book chapters on Verdi, Puccini, and Mascagni and is an active singer herself. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of The Opera Journal.