Elinor Olin

Associate Professor

Elinor Olin’s research interests include melodrama, 19th-century opera, concert life and cultural nationalism in France and social justice in music. Olin has read papers to the American Musicological Society, Ars Musica Chicago and has presented lectures and workshops for the Santa Fe Opera, the Grant Park Music Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She is past president of the American Musicological Society Midwest Chapter, was program annotator for Music in the Loft from 2000-2012.

Olin is the founder of Opera Immersion Seminars and has led in-depth discussion forums at the Santa Fe Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago since 2014.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Avant l’orage: French String Trios 1926-1939, Program Booklet. Black Oak Ensemble. Chicago: Cedille Records, 2022.

Trios from the City of Big Shoulders, Program Booklet. Lincoln Trio. Chicago: Cedille Records, 2021.

“Medievalism and Regionalist Identity in Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys,” in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism, edited by Stephen Meyer and Kristin Yri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

“Les Troyens: A Subject Close to his Heart,” Lyric Opera of Chicago: Lyric Unlimited, 2016.

“The Fêtes d’Orange:   Monumental Architecture as Embodiment of a Political Ideal.”  Read to the conference Hearing Landscapes Critically, Oxford University, 2012.

“Reconstructing Greek Drama:  Saint-Saëns and the Melodramatic Ideal,” in Melodramatic Voices: Understanding Music Drama, ed. Sarah Hibberd.  Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera, 3.  Surrey:  Ashgate, 2011.

“Antigone and Médée:  Cultural Archeology in the Antique Works of Saint-Saëns and d’Indy.”  Read to the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, 2010.

“The Concerts de l'Opéra 1895-1897: New Music at the Monument Garnier," 19th Century Music 16, no. 3 (1993): 253-266.