Juliana Snapper is an opera singer, voice researcher and artist. She received her B.M. in vocal performance from the Oberlin Conservatory where she studied under Richard Miller, and her M.A. in critical musicology at University of California, San Diego.
Snapper creates performances and installations that push the physical and expressive capacities of the singing body. She combines radical vocal techniques, composition, improvisation, and intermedia dynamics alone and in collaboration. Snapper collaborated with performance artist Ron Athey on the piece Judas Cradle which toured throughout the U.K. and premiered in the U.S. at Walt Disney Concert Hall's REDCAT Theatre. Her Five Fathoms Opera Project premiered in 2008 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA NY. In May 2009, she collaborated with composer Andrew Infanti and costume designer Susan Matheson on the premiere of the world's first underwater opera You Who Will Emerge From the Flood at the Victoria Baths in Manchester, England. It is part of an episodic and site-specific work that has since been staged in the U.S., France, Portugal, Poland and Switzerland.
Her projects have been supported by grants and fellowships from The Metropolitan Opera Foundation, Arts Council of Great Britain, The Center for Research in Computing in the Arts and The Durfee Foundation. Snapper lives in Los Angeles, CA.
References
- Eidsheim, Nina (2011). "Sensing Voice: Materiality and the Lived Body in Singing and Listening". The Senses and Society. 2 (6): 133–155. doi:10.2752/174589311X12961584845729. S2CID 193091032.
- Eidsheim, Nina Sun. "Sensing Voice". Sounding Out!. Retrieved April 25, 2011.
- Sulej, Karolina (October 23, 2010). "A Hundred Paragraphs on the Skin". Wysokie Obcasy.
- Coates, Jennifer (9 April 2008). "Juliana Snapper's Vocal Hysteria". Art21 blog. Retrieved April 9, 2008.
- Jones, Amelia (2005). "Holy Bodies: Erotic Ethics in Ron Athey and Juliana Snapper's The Judas Cradle". The Drama Review. 49 (3).
- TDR: The Drama Review on Judas Cradle
- Nigel Brookes. "Prison, Perception, and the Humanity of Art" Concrete Magazine, July 2005.
- Amelia Jones, "Holy Bodies: Erotic Ethics in Ron Athey and Juliana Snapper's The Judas Cradle." The Drama Review, Vol. 49, Issue 3. Fall, 2005.
- Faye Hirsch, Review of Performa05. Art in America, February 2006.
- Cindy Center, "Podcast Interview 21: Juliana Snapper"
- Lisa Cazzato-Vieyra, "The Judas Cradle Documentary." (DVD) Native Voice Films, London, UK, 2006.
- Mojca Kumerdej, "Soprano Juliana Snapper's Underwater Sirensong," Delo, June 28, 2008
- Leija Svabic, "When Swimming Pool Turns Opera Stage," Triera, June 21, 2008
- Leah Gangitano, in Performa: New Visual Art Performance,. NY: Distributed Art Publishers, 2007