1805 Symposium: Performance Cultures of Territorial New Orleans

Thursday, September 25, 4:30-6:00 p.m., Digital Media Center Theater

Associate Professor of Musicology Julia Doe (Columbia University), “The Romance of Grétry”

In this lecture, Professor Julia Doe explores the cultural and political position of the composer André Grétry’s music in the years up to and around 1805, including works featured in the 1805 Concert program as well as those associated with Minette Ferrand and Marie-Jeanne Marsan, two of the Caribbean’s most important lyric performers around the turn of the nineteenth century.

Julia Doe is Associate Professor of Music at Columbia University. Her first book, The Comedians of the King (University of Chicago Press, 2021), examines the cultural politics of lyric comedy in eighteenth-century France. Other recent essays have appeared in the Eighteenth-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, and the Journal of Musicology. 

Professor of Caribbean History Philippe Girard (McNeese State), “Exiled performers from Haiti (Saint-Domingue) in New Orleans and the Caribbean Origins of American Blackface”

Professor Philippe Girard’s talk will focus particularly on the entwined lives of Marie-Jeanne Marsan and Minette Ferrand, the stars of the Cap-Francais and Port-au-Prince operas, respectively, each of whom passed away in New Orleans during the Territorial period.

Philippe Girard is a professor of Caribbean history at McNeese State University and a specialist of the Haitian Revolution. He is the author of five books, including Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life (Basic Books 2016).

The Symposium on Performance Cultures of Territorial New Orleans is presented in conjunction with the 1805 Concert by the LSU CFFS with support from the Strategic Excellence Fund of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

As part of its mission, CFFS routinely invites nationally and internationally recognized scholars to the LSU campus to present on aspects of French Language and Culture, with a focus on Caribbean Studies and Digital Humanities.