Dr Avra Xepapadakou is a researcher of opera and theatre. She has worked as a faculty member at the Department of Philology, Division of Theatre and Music Studies, University of Crete, where she taught History of Theatre and Opera (2009-2016), and as an affiliated lecturer at the University of the Peloponnese, at Harokopion University, as well as at the Hellenic Open University. She has published articles and papers on topics such as the relations between Italian and Ionian opera, the question of westernization/orientalism in Modern Greek theatre and art music, the foreign opera troupes touring in nineteenth-century southeastern Europe and the Orient, and the introduction of operetta to the Modern Greek stage.

   She is the author of a book on Ionian opera composer Pavlos (Paolo) Carrer (Athens: Fagotto Editions, 2013), which was recently awarded the prize for best Greek book in the field of musicology by the Union of Greek Critics for Drama and Music (2016). Her latest book, co-authored with Alexandros Charkiolakis, is entitled “Interspersed with Musical Entertainment”. Music in Greek Salons of the 19th Century (Athens: Hellenic Music Centre, 2017).

   She was a member of the main research team of the project “Chrysalis” (E.U. action ‘Thales’, University of Athens, 2012-2015), project leader of the research project ‘Archivio’ concerning the theatre archive of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (2013-2014), and a principal investigator of the Project ARCH-Archival Research and Cultural Heritage which processes and studies the above theatrical archive (E.U. Aristeia II, 2014-2015). Today she is documentation consultant and curator of the archive of Romeo Castellucci and the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. Thanks to the above-mentioned work, the archive of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio was declared of major historical interest and importance by the Italian Ministry of Culture (2015).

   She has conducted research as a grantee visiting scholar at California State University–Sacramento (2015). In 2016 she was awarded a research grant and research visitorship as part of the Balzan Prize in Musicology Towards a global history of music. Within this framework, she has curated the session “Greece: A cultural crossroads between East and West” at the University of Oxford (2016), and has conducted research at the Musikwissenschaftliches Institut, Universität Zürich (2017).

http://www.arch-srs.com

https://crete.academia.edu/AvraXepapadakou