During opera performance singers deliver vocally demanding roles, follow a conductor, portray emotions of a musical work, act, dance, and engage with costumes, sets and props before an audience. Hence, opera performance is a stressful experience. This study examined different types of stress experiences by measuring the trajectories of 10 opera trainees’ heart rate variability (HRV) during two performances, covering onstage and offstage periods. We explored connections between HRV, self-reported stress measures, and expert-rated difficulty of the performed roles. We discovered that opera trainees had lower HRV and thus experienced greater physiological stress, while onstage compared to offstage periods. In contrast, when asked about performance specific stress, opera trainees self-reported that they felt more nervous when they were offstage. This disconnect between physiological measurement and psychological self-assessment suggests that there are two relevant types of stress for opera performance: psychological stress, which is felt more keenly offstage, and physiological stress, which is greater onstage. Patterns of association between HRV and self-reported measures suggest that HRV is linked to general (not performance-specific) stress. Patterns between self-reported measures suggest that music performance anxiety relates to trait anxiety. Our results indicate specific targets for possible interventions for stress management in opera singers.
Images are powerful tools for shaping perceptions of the past. In the context of sport at Canadian Indian residential schools, photographic images were consciously constructed and carefully selected and have been subsequently recirculated by contemporary media. Images of smiling, happy children at play at Canadian Indian residential schools have been used to lend credence to notions of sport as an unquestionable force for good without considering the context in which the images were created. In this paper, we explore how media, including online public repositories and newspapers, have taken up images of sport, specifically hockey, at Indian residential schools and how they evoke ideas about the nation and Indigenous–settler relations in Canada. We argue that photographs of residential school sports reinforce colonial narratives that lend ideological weight to settler colonial rule.
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