Classical Music and Opera During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Steffen Lepa is a Postdoc Media and Communication Scholar leading the computational musicology team of the Audio Communication Group at Technische Universität Berlin (Germany). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the online knowledge portal ‘Musik und Medien’. Steffen was a Guest Professor for Music and Media at Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media, a Principal Investigator at the Horizon 2020 project ‘abc_dj’, and a Scientific Collaborator in the cluster-of-excellence research project ‘Medium und Emotion’.Ruth Müller-Lindenberg is a Professor of Historical Musicology at the Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media (Germany). Previously, Prof. Müller-Lindenberg was the orchestra manager and deputy artistic director of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra (1992/93). She also served as the Head of the Department for Music Theater, Dance, Music in the Berlin Senate Department for Cultural Affairs and was a Head of Department in the Office of the Federal President of Germany(2003–2006). Her research interests include music aesthetics, music criticism, and music theater.  Hauke Egermann is a Professor in Systematic Musicology at the Institute of Music and Musicology, TU Dortmund University (Germany). He graduated in Systematic Musicology, Media Science, and Communication Research and then studied neuroscience, earning a Ph.D. in Music Psychology/Neuroscience from the Centre for Systemic Neuroscience Hannover (Germany). He was an Assistant Professor and later an Associate Professor at the Department of Music, University of York, UK, where he founded and directed the York Music Psychology Group.

• Chapter 1 Quo Vadis Classical Music? Remarks on the Post-Pandemic Condition.- Chapter 2 Opera (Training (Research)) During Lockdown.- Chapter 3 The pandemic as a peephole into the ongoing digital transformation of opera. Insights from an expert interview study with the management of Berlin’s three opera houses.- Chapter 4 The Role of Artistic Directors of Classical Music Festivals in COVID-19 Crisis Communication.- Chapter 5 Streaming Opera: Compromise Solution or Future-Oriented Reception Form?.- Chapter 6 Digital Concert Experience – An online research project on live streaming during the pandemic.- Chapter 7 Did lockdowns stimulate digital cultural participation? Mapping the post-pandemic Berlin classical concert audience and its adoption of audiovisual concert streams.- Chapter 8 Combining two different worlds. A post-pandemic interview with the dramaturgs Dr. Merle Fahrholz and Dr. Ulrich Lenz.