Emma Kavanagh

Emma Kavanagh is Assistant Professor of Historical Musicology at University College Dublin, where her research focuses on opera and musical culture during the Belle Époque. Prior to her current role at UCD, she held an ingénieure post on the AixOPERA project at Aix-Marseille Université, a French Embassy Visiting Fellowship at Sorbonne Université’s Institut de Recherche en Musicologie, and a Career Development Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford.

The project

Title: Music, Work, and Social Movement in Belle Époque Paris, 1871-1914

"This project re-examines the Conservatoire Populaire de Mimi Pinson, a music school for working women in Montmartre founded in 1902 by the radical bohemian composer Gustave Charpentier. Using archival sources from the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP), it interrogates the gendered politics of the Conservatoire Populaire and its curriculum, and the role it played in Charpentier's wider public image. As well as contributing to my ongoing monograph project, Music, Work, and Social Movement in Belle Époque Paris, 1871–1914, this research will underpin a co-curated exhibition with the BHVP to mark the anniversary of the composer’s death (as part of my ongoing research programme for 2026, CHARPENTIER70)."

Hosting institution: Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris

Selective Bibliography

• KAVANAGH, Emma. 'Composing Autobiography: Gustave Charpentier, Musical Life Narratives, and the Bohemian Self'. In press at Journal of Musicological Research, as part of special issue 'Music, Autobiography, and Constructing the Self' (eds. Emma Kavanagh and Sarah Kirby), forthcoming 2026.
• KAVANAGH, Emma. 'Review: Boulevard des Italiens, Benjamin Bernheim (tenor), Frédéric Chaslin (conductor), Orchestra del 2025. Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Deutsche Grammaphon, 2022'. Nineteenth-Century Music Review 22, no. 3 (2025): 1-6.
• KAVANAGH, Emma. "'Du Paradis Rêvé': Parodies of Japonisme in Saint-Saëns’s La princesse jaune". Cambridge Opera Journal 36, vol. 3 (2024): 295-313.
• KAVANAGH, Emma. "'Qu’il est loin mon pays': Staging (Be)longing in Massenet’s Sapho’". Dix-Neuf 27, vol. 4 (2023): 247-267.