Vocal acoustics and their experiential and anatomical dimensions; embodied vocal practice; phenomenologies of the singing body; interactions between musical structure and vocal physiology; relationships between vocal coordination, perception, and practical vocal application; and the interdependence of acoustic and coordinative processes within vocal practice.

Psychological and relational dynamics of vocal pedagogy; negotiation of internal versus external authority in studio and rehearsal spaces; power and dependency in studio pedagogy; self-perception and hearing in relation to external feedback; and the impact of recording technologies on vocal learning.

Historical and contemporary patronage and financial structures affecting singers and composers in opera; economic barriers to training, artistic and professional access, and operatic production; and the changing institutional conditions through which operatic careers and new works are established and sustained.

During my master’s studies (2011-13), I completed two research projects on twentieth-century opera: Alban Berg’s Lulu and Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. As the original theses are no longer accessible, the following summaries outline the scope and analytical approach of these projects.

Lulu: The Femme Fatale and the Question of Female Agency

This project focused on Alban Berg’s Lulu, examining its palindromic architecture—dramatically, through character mirroring, and musically, through the symmetry of its twelve-tone composition. My analysis traced Lulu’s construction and progression as a femme fatale, framed by broader cultural resonances of gender, sexuality, and violence. I discussed Berg’s twelve-tone language not only as a technical device but as a dramatic engine, shaping the opera’s structural symmetry, self-referential design, and psychological trajectory. Central to my approach was understanding the characters, their needs, and the relational dynamics through which they collide, producing reactions that create a fatal momentum. Berg’s palindromic design crystallizes this momentum into structural inevitability, binding the characters in a symmetry of action and response as a closed circuit, in which every impulse is mirrored, every force reflected back until destruction becomes inevitable. In this sense, I framed Lulu less as a fully realized individual than as a symbolic construct—an amalgamation of projections, shaped by the expectations and desires of her male counterparts. Her reduction to symbol serves as a commentary on gender, society, and sexual politics, while at the level of character it reflects a traumatized psyche: a self split into fragments, where agency defers to the fundamental drive for connection and, ultimately, survival.

This work of dramatic and thematic analysis, with attention to cultural resonance, was paired in dialogue with close study of Berg’s musical language, and inherent dramatic function. I situated the opera within its literary lineage by analyzing it in relation to Berg’s source material, Frank Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904), which had already positioned Lulu as both femme fatale and victim. Wedekind’s evocation of Pandora situates Lulu within a mythic genealogy of archetypal women—her downfall recalling Eve’s transgression and Lilith’s unruly sexuality—figures through which cultural anxiety locates the origin of male ruin in female agency. At its core, the study asked whether Lulu is a character in her own right or a cultural construction, embodying enduring archetypes of dangerous female agency and turn-of-the-century anxieties around sexuality, morality, and female power.

Turning the Screw: Desire, Repression, and Madness

My second project was a dramatic and musical analysis of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. The study focused on Britten’s use of the recurring “screw theme” and its variations as a structural and psychological device, tracing its relationship to the progressive mental state of the Governess. Particular attention was given to the function of desire, sexuality, repression, and shame in shaping her psychological trajectory, as well as the roles of responsibility and isolation in accelerating her unraveling. Through close study of Britten’s motivic design and varied musical language, I examined how the score blurs inner and outer worlds—rendering the Governess’ shifting mental states, intensifying dramatic stakes, and evoking an atmosphere at once uncanny and charged with psychological tension. In doing so, the analysis revealed the fissure between her collapsing inner world and the fragile outward control she struggles to maintain. This tension is further complicated by the question of appearances—both the Governess’ need to maintain social and moral acceptability, and the unstable perceptions through which her own reality is filtered.

The project also explored Britten’s rendering of psychological ambiguity—between reality and imagination, authority and vulnerability—illuminating the unstable boundary between music as dramatic environment and music as inner voice. At the heart of this reading was the question of agency: whether the screw is turned by fate, by sinister external forces, or by the Governess herself, tightening the screw through the very distortions of her perception. A close comparison with Henry James’ novella further highlighted how Britten’s libretto and score reshape the source material, culminating in an in-depth character study of one of opera’s most hauntingly desperate protagonists.