Inspired by her Menlo classes in English, Humanities, and Drama and her years of classical voice training, Uma signed on to do an Arts & Letters Capstone in the IP program to explore the history of opera in the West. She aimed to study how female roles in opera have changed over the centuries, and how the portrayal of gender roles reflects both societies’ rigid behavioral expectations of women and men, and a simultaneous fascination with gender ambiguity.

Read Uma’s Artist Statement View the Video Lectures

Photo: The Victrola Book of the Opera, 1917 (https://archive.org/details/victrolabookofop00vict/page/292/mode/1up?view=theater)