Professor Sarah Hibberd
PhD
Expertise
Opera and musical culture in the 19th century. Staging practices and effects; intersections with politics; the adventures of singers; travel and mobility; especially Paris, London, Naples.
Current positions
Stanley Hugh Badock Chair of Music
Department of Music
Contact
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Biography
I joined the Department of Music at Bristol in September 2017. My publications include French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, 2009) and edited volumes Melodramatic Voices (2011); French Art, Theatre and Opera 1750–1850 (2014, with Richard Wrigley); Music and the Sonorous Sublime (2020, with Miranda Stanyon); and Berlioz and His World (2024, with Francesca Brittan). I am currently coeditor of the Cambridge Opera Journal, and a member of the REF2021 subpanel for UoA33.
Research interests
My research interests focus primarily on nineteenth-century musical culture, especially opera (French, Italian) and other forms of music theatre including melodrama and ballet, in Paris and London. My AHRC-funded project, French Opera and the Revolutionary Sublime, analyses the cataclysmic denouements of a series of works performed in Paris between 1789 and 1830, in the context of France's evolving relationship with revolution. It pays particular attention to staging technologies (including lighting and special effects) and audiences' sensory and emotional experiences. My new Leverhulme Major Research Project examines the activities of the 'Puritani Quartet' in London and Paris during the 1830s and 40s, with a particular focus on the bass, Luigi Lablache, and explores singer networks and mobility in nineteenth-century Europe.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
French operetta after operetta, 1872–1900 (Tommaso Sabbatini)
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of MusicDates
01/09/2022 to 31/08/2025
Italianità abroad: the Puritani Quartet in London and Paris, 1835–1843
Principal Investigator
Description
Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship:
This project seeks a radically new understanding of early nineteenth-century Italian opera through the activities of a quartet of singers who premiered key works – including Bellini’s…Managing organisational unit
Department of MusicDates
01/02/2022 to 31/01/2025
Rescinding Genius
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of MusicDates
31/03/2021 to 30/03/2023
8023 Brit. Ac Newton International Fellowship - NIFBA19\190608 - Tommaso Sabbatini
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of MusicDates
23/03/2020 to 23/03/2022
French Opera and the Revolutionary Sublime
Principal Investigator
Description
AHRC Research Leadership Fellow (including public engagement activities, organising events, mentoring a research associate, publications), undertaken at University of Nottingham
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/music/research/projects/french-opera-and-the-revolutionary-sublime.aspxManaging organisational unit
Department of MusicDates
01/02/2014 to 31/01/2015
Publications
Recent publications
01/08/2024The Language of Prophecy in 'Les Troyens'
Berlioz and His World
Berlioz and His World
Berlioz and His World
Cherubini's Médée and Sublime Vengeance
Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
“The Essence of Nine Trombones”: Luigi Lablache and Models of Masculinity in 1830s London
London Voices (1820–1840)
Teaching
19th-century music history, opera, debates in musicology.
UG and MA units include: Opera & Politics; Romantic Imagination. I contribute to: Music and Society; Approaches to Music History; Readings in Musicology; Research Skills, Source Study. I supervise third-year and MA dissertations.
I supervise UG and MA dissertations on a range of topics.