MIRC and DERC, RMIT’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre are proud to present an author talk at RMIT’s media portal.

Nicolò Palazzetti is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at La Sapienza University of Rome, where he also lectures on music sociology. Nicolò earned his Ph.D. from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris in 2017. Before joining La Sapienza in 2021, Nicolò served as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Birmingham and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Strasbourg.

Children of Paradise: Exploring Opera Fandom in the Digital Age
In this seminar, I present the outcomes of my qualitative and comparative examination regarding opera fandom. My research integrated digital ethnography on social media platforms with on-site participant observation across prominent opera venues, notably those located in Rome, Milan, Paris, London, and New York. The study of opera fandom is crucial for reevaluating the legacy of this centuries-old practice and contemplating its potential futures in a period of critical change for live performing arts.