Trevor R. Nelson, assistant professor of musicology in the School of Music, presented “Staging Inclusion: Commonwealth Ideals in the Mid-Twentieth Century British Children’s Opera” at Music, Diplomacy, Propaganda: Towards New Directions (international conference hosted by the Université de Montréal) on Oct. 18, 2025.
Description: In Commonwealth studies, much attention is paid to Britain’s diplomatic efforts promoting the Commonwealth as the Empire’s nonhostile successor (Murphy 2018, Prior 2019). Domestically, the British government buoyed attempts to promote Commonwealth belonging particularly among young people by sponsoring children’s media espousing Commonwealth values. In exactly what ways were these values communicated, and was this propaganda effective? Drawing on Timberlake’s theories of children’s opera as political education (2015), I analyze select scenes from Britten’s Let’s Make an Opera! (1949) and Bush’s The Spell Unbound (1953). I argue that divergent understandings of Commonwealth citizenship led young performers and audiences to reject these works’ political overtones. By attending to the political ramifications of children’s operas, music scholars come to a better understanding of how music worked as a tool in shaping post-imperial Britishness.