The UMKC Conservatory welcomes Dr. Jane Sylvester as Assistant Professor of Musicology, Fall 2022. Dr. Sylvester received her Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music in Musicology with a focus on verismo opera. Her work centers on studies of gender, embodiment, and the intersections between musical practices and histories of science in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italian opera.
Jane's research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Musicological Society, and the Presser Foundation, among others. Her most recent articles, “Dramatised Deviancy: Tosca at the Dawn of Criminal Anthropology” and “Puccini’s Material Girls: Tensions of the Spiritual Body in Le Villi” are forthcoming in the Cambridge Opera Journal and Opera Quarterly. She has presented her work nationally and internationally at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Transnational Opera Studies Conference, and the North American and International Conferences on Nineteenth-Century Music.
Committed to engaging with public audiences, Jane recently collaborated with Michigan Opera Theatre to compose a multimedia article about Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana for its 2021–22 season. Additionally, she is a saxophonist with more than 20 years of performance experience.
Welcome, Fall 2022!