My name is Micaela Baranello and I am a musicologist. I’m currently an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas as well as the Director of Marketing and Social Media at Opera Fayetteville. My first book, The Operetta Empire: Music Theater in Early Twentieth-Century Vienna, will be published by the University of California Press in 2021. In my free time I go to whatever opera I can find and I have always enjoyed writing reviews. While I hope my writing here is informative, and my perspective is unavoidably that of a historian, I consider my voice here primarily critical rather than musicological.
I particularly like writing about Baroque opera, Wagner, Strauss, and Regietheater. I’ve written this blog through years of dissertation-writing at Princeton, a year of archival research in Vienna, a publishing internship in Munich (fun with critical editions), and a lot of time living in New Jersey. Most of my non-blog writing is scholarly, but I’ve also contributed to the New York Times Arts and Leisure section and occasionally write program notes. I recently worked as a dramaturg for the Bard Music Festival, and I also sometimes work as a stage manager, including the Princeton University Opera Theater’s productions of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and Albert Herring. You can see my scholarly work here.
I have been asked about this blog’s title; if you’re wondering I’m just going to send you here.
I can be reached at likelyimpossibilities [at] gmail.com.