Plays, places and participants

The focus at this conference was, deliberately, narrowed down to agents and their roles in the develoment of the fields in question; composers, dancers, dramatists, critics, audience members.

The contributions by the keynote speaker illustrates the chosen focus of the conference. Sarah McCleave covered female dancers/choreographers, David Charlton the role of opéra-comique on private arenas, and Sarah Maslan discussed the democratizing potential  of theatre in revolutionary France. The result of this conference was the 2021 anthology Performing Arts in Changing Societies: Opera, Dance, and Theatre in European and Nordic Countries around 1800.