Der Berggeist vom Schöckl

Oper Graz and the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz Take Opera to the Countryside

Authors

  • Constanze Wimmer University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
  • Sarah Weiss University of Music and Performing Arts Graz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.71228/ijmm.2024.15

Keywords:

Musikvermittlung, audience development, countryside, opera, Austria, ethnography, ethnomusiocology

Abstract

Graz Opera and the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz developed a mobile miniature opera based on a Styrian legend, to be performed in small regional cultural initiatives in Styria. The first part with an open end took place in 15 locations, the second and final part once in the opera house in Graz. This article deals with the artistic realization of the project and illuminates the Berggeist vom Schöckl from the perspective of music mediation and ethnomusicology. Of particular interest for both fields are the conditions and approaches of audience development elaborated here in relation to the field of tension between city and countryside.

Author Biographies

Constanze Wimmer, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz

Constanze Wimmer is Professor of Music Mediation at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. She studied musicology, journalism and cultural management and holds a doctorate in music education from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. She has worked in the concert industry and in cultural education in the fields of music mediation and audience engagement. She is a founding member of Plattform Musikvermittlung Österreich, IG Musikvermittlung Österreich and Forum Musikvermittlung an Hochschulen und Universitäten. Together with Johannes Voit, she edits the publication series Forum Musikvermittlung - Perspektiven aus Forschung und Praxis. In spring 2020, she took on the role of Vice-Rector for Teaching and International Affairs at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz.

Sarah Weiss, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz

Sarah Weiss is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz.   She holds a doctorate (ethnomusicology) from New York University. She has served as Associate Professor and inaugural Rector of Saga Residential College at Yale-NUS College (2013-2018) – an American-style, liberal-arts college hosted by the National University of Singapore and co-founded by Yale University. She has also taught  ethnomusicology at Yale, Harvard, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of Sydney. A scholar working in Southeast Asian cultures and performance, gender studies, postcoloniality, religion, and hybridity studies, her articles appear in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. She has written two monographs: Ritual Soundings: Women Performers and World Religions (2019) and Listening to an Earlier Java: Aesthetics, Gender, and the Music of Wayang in Central Java (2007). An active musician, she is the artistic director for the university’s community Javanese ensemble, Nyai Rara Saraswati.

Cover of the first issue of the International Journal of Music Mediation (IJMM) - 24/1

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Published

2025-01-17

Issue

No. 1 (2024): Doing Music Mediation. International Perspectives on a Multi-Faceted Practice

Section

Article

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Sarah Weiss, Constanze Wimmer

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.