Juliana Snapper is a contemporary opera singer, live performance artist, experimental theater director, voice scholar and musicologist. She received her B.M. in vocal performance from the Oberlin Conservatory where she studied under Richard Miller, and her M.A. in critical musicology at University of California, San Diego.
Snapper creates performances and installations that push the physical and expressive capacities of the singing body. As the Huffington Post put it, among some of our favorite opera innovators... transforming the future of opera... Snapper is a contemporary soprano who combines radical vocal techniques, improvisation and collaboration to push the operatic medium to its extreme limits.
She collaborated with performance artist Ron Athey on the piece The Judas Cradle which toured throughout the U.K. and premiered in the U.S. at Walt Disney Concert Hall's REDCAT Theatre (2005). Her Five Fathoms Opera Project premiered in 2008 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA NY. In May 2009, she collaborated with composer Andrew Infanti and costume designer Susan Matheson on the premiere of the world's first underwater opera You Who Will Emerge From the Flood at the Victoria Baths in Manchester, England, a site-specific work that has been staged till 2017 in the U.S., Slovenia, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland, and Australia.
A long-standing associate of French composer Philippe Manoury and mathematician and sound designer Miller Puckette, she has collaborated with them on several original works and concert works: Illud Etiam, En écho, Double Voiced ...
Her projects have been supported by grants and fellowships from The Metropolitan Opera Foundation, Arts Council of Great Britain, The Center for Research in Computing and the Arts and The Durfee Foundation.
References
- Frank, Priscilla (26 August 2014). "14 Artists Who Are Transforming The Future Of Opera". huffpost.com. HuffPost. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "The Judas Cradle". Juliana Snapper's website.
- "Five Fathoms Deep My Father Lies". Juliana Snapper's website.
- Shlomowitz, Matthew (22 May 2023). "Podcast Ep.105: Juliana Snapper and Andrew Infanti - You Who Will Emerge from the Flood". Soundmaking. Acast. Retrieved 22 May 2023.
- "Illud etiam, Philippe Manoury". brahms.ircam.fr. IRCAM.
- "En écho, Philippe Manoury". Juliana Snapper's website.
- "Double Voiced, J. Snapper and M. Puckette". The BIFEM Archive. Bandcamp.
- Eidsheim, Nina Sun (April 25, 2011). "Sensing Voice". Sounding Out!.
- Eidsheim, Nina Sun (April 16, 2015). "Sensing Voice: Materiality and the Lived Body in Singing and Listening". The Senses and Society. 6 (2): 133–155. doi:10.2752/174589311X12961584845729.
- Sulej, Karolina (October 27, 2010). "Portrety kobiet:Setki ust na skórze [Portait of women: A hundred paragraphs on the skin]". Wysokie Obcasy newspaper.
- Coates, Jennifer (9 April 2008). "Juliana Snapper's Vocal Hysteria". Art21 blog. Retrieved April 9, 2008.
- Nigel Brookes. "Prison, Perception, and the Humanity of Art" Concrete Magazine, July 2005.
- Amelia Jones (Spring 2006), "Holy Bodies: Erotic Ethics in Ron Athey and Juliana Snapper's The Judas Cradle.", TDR: The Drama Review, vol. 50 no. 1, 2006, p. 159-169.
- Faye Hirsch, Review of Performa05. Art in America, February 2006.
- Cindy Center, "Podcast Interview 21: Juliana Snapper"
- Lisa Cazzato-Vieyra, "The Judas Cradle Documentary." (DVD) Native Voice Films, London, UK, 2006.
- Mojca Kumerdej (June 28, 2008), "Sirenine podvodne arije , Delo.
- Leija Svabic, "When Swimming Pool Turns Opera Stage," Triera, June 21, 2008
- Lia Gangitano (curator, Nov 02, 2005), First Biennial Performa 05, New Visual Art Performance, NY, Distributed Art Publishers, Performa: New Visual Art Performance, June, 1st, 2007.