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Dr Lola Salem

Dr Lola Salem graduated from the École Normale Supérieure, Lyon, in 2015 (MA Musicology), the Sorbonne in 2018 (MA Philosophy of Arts) and the University of Oxford in 2023 (DPhil Musicology). She is a Lecturer in Music (Oriel) and French (Wadham, St Catherine’s). Her research lies in the fields of opera, performers, and other material conditions related to creativity during the long seventeenth century. She was trained as a professional singer at the Maîtrise de Radio France between 2005 and 2010, and worked as an art critic across Europe between 2016 and 2020.

At Oriel, Lola teaches the following papers: Foundations in the Study of Music, Musical Thought and Scholarship, Historically Informed Performance, Music and Nationalisms, The String Quartet Between Classicism & Modernism, 18th Century Opera.

Research Interests

Lola’s work scrutinises opera performers and their roles through the prism of legal frameworks, thus demonstrating how administrative law fundamentally influenced and guided artistic creativity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Publications

Studia Iuridica Lublinensia, vol. 32, no. 2 (2023), “Creative Law: Singers, Roles, and Legal Disputes at the Parisian Opéra during the Ancien Régime.”

The Fashioning of French Opera (1672-1791). Identity, Production, Networks, ed. Nestola, Dubruque, Leconte, Dratwicki (Brepols, 2023), “Pensions, administrative law, and the troupe at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris under the Ancien Régime.”

États and the Legal Framework of Casting Singers at the Académie Royale de Musique During the Ancien Régime”, in Proceedings of the KVNM-RMA 2021 Conference. 2022.

Literature review of L’air italien sur la scène des theatres parisiens (1687-1715) (Nestola, Brepols, 2020), in Revue de Musicologie, t. 207, no. 2 (2022).

Literature review of Coquettes, Wifes, and Widows. Gender Politics in French Baroque Opera and Theatre (Ray, Boydell and Brewer, 2020), in Revue de Musicologie, t. 207, no. 1 (2021).

“A Breach in the Mind”, Athwart (2020).

“Une voix ramiste incarnée à l’épreuve des sources: Marie Fel ou l’héritage renouvelé du jeu lyrique à l’époque ramiste”, in Filigrane. Musique, esthétique, sciences, société (2018).