A special issue of Cambridge Opera Journal has just been released (www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-opera-journal/latest-issue), co-edited by Benjamin Walton (Faculty of Music) and Laura Tunbridge (University of Oxford). Entitled Remaking the Aria, it is conceived as a tribute to one of the journal’s founder editors, Roger Parker. Prof. Parker is currently Thurston Dart Professor of Music at King’s College London, and between 1999 and 2007 held the post of 1684 Professor of Music at Cambridge. He has also served as supervisor or mentor to all thirty-two of the contributors to the special issue, including an impressive range of Cambridge alumni and alumnae, such as Davinia Caddy, James Q. Davies, Kate Guthrie, Katherine Hambridge, Delphine Mordey, Laura Protano-Biggs, Holly Rogers and Flora Willson, as well as current and recent Cambridge research fellows Francesca Vella and Gavin Williams. Each contributor was tasked with writing 1,500 words about an individual operatic aria from any perspective. The results cover repertory from the 18th to the 21st centuries, and offer a fascinating snapshot of current preoccupations in opera scholarship.
