The Reflections of Memory: An Account of a Cognitive Approach to Historically Informed Staging - Blin, Gilbert (Leiden, 2018)
The research is dedicated to Gilbert Blins work in staging operas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nourished by a decade of productions for the Boston Early Music Festival, the first objective of his dissertation is to enable a better understanding of both his creative and interpretive processes in the operatic field. The main research question he attempts to answer in his dissertation can be phrased as follows: how can a post-modern stage director use historical research for creative purposes? The title of this dissertation, The Reflections of Memory, is the appellation Gilbert Blin has been giving to his current approach as an artist and constitutes a conceptual answer to this question.
Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor promoties te verdedigen op 12 december 2018.
Keywords: Boston Early Music Festival (USA); 17th Century (1601-1700); 18th Century (1701-1800); Opera; Staging; Historically informed performance