Reciting Parsifal: Opera as Spoken-Word Performance in America

Marian Wilson Kimber is professor of musicology at the University of Iowa. Her publications have treated Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Hensel, and women in music. Wilson Kimber’s book, The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press, 2017), was awarded subventions from the Society for American Music and the American Musicological Society. As a founding member of the duo Red Vespa, Wilson Kimber has helped to revive the performance of musical readings by women composers.