Dr. Jen Stephenson, assistant professor of choral music at Tabor College, will present the 23rd annual Dr. Richard G. Kyle Faculty Lecture at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9, in the Franz Family Heritage Lobby of the Shari Flaming Center for the Arts.
Stephenson, now in her fourth year at Tabor, has titled her presentation, “The Nature of Freedom: A Comparative Study of Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero and Menotti’s The Consul.”
“My lecture focuses on the ways in which the immense world events of World War I and II affected two otherwise disparate composers in such similar ways that, while their operas superficially seem completely different and unrelated, they actually come to the exact same conclusions about the nature of freedom and culpability of oppression,” Stephenson said.
“The lecture is geared toward an audience of non-musicians, so while the lecture is about two operas and how they related to one another, those who like history, culture, drama and literature will all enjoy the topic, and there won’t be so much music-speak that a non-musician would be lost,” she added.
The first lecture in the series was given in 1997 by Kyle himself. In 2004 the series was named in his honor. The event was founded to encourage scholarship and to recognize the work of a Tabor College faculty member.
The public is invited to the lecture.
