Maria Virginia Acuña

Areas of research and creative activity

European music history and culture, 1500–1750 (Spain, Italy, France, England); Spanish musical theatre (1600–1760s); Opera; Exoticism; Orientalism; Nationalism; Music, gender, and race; Interdisciplinary studies; Music, literature, and visual arts.

Courses taught at UVic

MUS 116: Music Appreciation
MUS 121: Western Music from Antiquity to 1750
MUS 220A: Western Music from 1750 to 1885
MUS 391: Music, Women and Culture
MUS 498: Graduating Project in Music History
MUS 532: Myths and Tales in Early Modern Music
MUS 503: Introduction to Graduate Study and Music Bibliography
MUS 531: Gender and Race on the Musical Stage
MUS 533: Graduate Forum in Musicology
MUS 534: Advanced Research Forum in Musicology

Brief biography

I began my musical studies at the Conservatorio Nacional Superior de Música in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I hold degrees from the University of British Columbia (B.A. and M.A.) and the University of Toronto (Ph.D., 2016). My research has been funded and recognized by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for doctoral studies, awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Eugene K. Wolf Grant awarded by the American Musicological Society, the SOCAN Foundation/George Proctor Prize, the “Pilar Sáenz Essay Prize” awarded by The Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, and the “Best article” prize awarded by the Canadian Association of Hispanists.

My research appears in Eighteenth-Century Music, Early Music, the Bulletin of the Comediantes, Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana, and in conference proceedings. I am also co-author (with Susan Lewis) of Claudio Monteverdi: A Research and Information Guide (Routledge, 2018). I am currently working on a book project on female operatic cross-dressing in early modern Spain. Other research projects include witchcraft and musical theatre in early modern Europe, representations of race and ethnicity in opera, and the representation of Spain in operas by non-Spanish composers.

Prior to coming to UVic, I was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. I also taught music and opera history courses at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia.

Selected publications

Book:

• Co-authored with Susan Lewis. Claudio Monteverdi: A Research and Information Guide. Routledge, 2018. 242 pp.

Articles:

• “Enamorados ridículos: acerca del humor y la parodia en Acis y Galatea (1708),” Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana 35 (2022): 171–91.
• “May she who was once beautiful be transformed into a monster”: Magic and Witchcraft in Envy is the Poison of Love (Madrid, 1711),” Early Music 48.3 (2020): 377–90.
• “Love Conquers All: Cupid, Philip V, and the Allegorical Zarzuela during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–16),” Eighteenth-Century Music 15.1 (2018): 29–45.  
• “Sobbing Cupids, Lamenting Lovers, and Weeping Nymphs in the Early Zarzuela: Calderón de la Barca’s El laurel de Apolo (1657) and Durón and Navas’s Apolo y Dafne (ca. 1700),” Bulletin of the Comediantes 69.2 (2017): 69–95. “Best article” (Premio al major ensayo escrito por un/a professor/a o investigador/a) awarded by the Canadian Association of Hispanists (Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas), 2018.
• ““Muera Cupido!”: Una lectura sobre la filosofía del amor en Salir el amor del mundo (c.1696),” in Musicología global, musicología local, edited by Pilar Ramos López, Javier Marín López, Germán Gan Quesada y Elena Torres Clemente (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2013), 2157–2169.
• “Violencia y desesperación: la utilización de los afectos en las obras de música teatral de Sebastián Durón,” in Sebastián Durón (1660–1716) y la música de su época, edited by Paulino Capdepón and Juan José Pastor Comín (Vigo, Galicia: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo, 2013), 137–50.

“Amusing the King: Gender, Parody and Musical Theatre in Early 18th Century Spain.”
Deans’ Lecture Series. Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria. Fall 2022.