Danielle Herrington, D.M.A.

Danielle L Herrington is an artist-scholar, actively performing, producing, teaching, and researching in Oklahoma City. She is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Central Oklahoma. And her scholarship in opera studies and performance studies approaches music as lived experience, with specific investigations on eighteenth-century French opera, culture, and philosophy, as well as twenty-first century American opera. As a performative musicologist, she has actively presented on these topics at both international and national conferences, including the National Opera Association Conference, American Musicological Society Southwest Regional Conference, Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini in Spain, and Rousseau Association Colloquium. Recent publications include “Musical Moral Sense in Rousseau’s Essai” (a forthcoming peer-review book chapter with the International Rousseau Association), “Cultivating Connections in Twenty-First Century American Opera” (dissertation), and a chapter in Singing Speech and Speaking Melodies published by Brepols, entitled, “Sensibilité, Self-Sacrifice, and the Sentimental: Examining Jacques-Marie Boutet de Monvel and Nicolas Dalayrac’s Ideological Diversion Philippe et Georgette (1791) at the Salle Favart.”

More broadly, her research is characterized by liminal style shifts, investigating how this materializes in the works of eighteenth-century composers, especially Rameau, Rousseau, Grétry, and Dalayrac, as well other composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Heggie, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Rossini, Wolf, and Verdi. Danielle emphasizes social contextualization and engages with a range of methodologies, including reception history, performance studies, theatre studies and archives, ethnography, semiotics, topic theory, aesthetics, moral sense theory, and structural as well as hermeneutic analysis. For her dissertation research, in particular, she employed a multimodal methodology that intersected ethnographic practices with linguistic and archival data analysis, illuminating influential cultural agents from the recent past. Fourteen interviews with operatic industry leaders, such as Timothy O’Leary, Anthony Freud, Jake Heggie, and Patrick Summers, provide insights into twenty-first century non-profit arts organizations and their commissioning processes. By examining selected pioneering American opera theatres and four world premieres from 2000-2019, Danielle determined the creative teams crafting contemporary opera seek to connect new opera to audiences through familiar, often socially relevant, dramaturgy. Through an arts administration and business lens, the project is concerned with the future of our art form and is being re-shaped into a monograph.

As a lyric coloratura soprano, Danielle has interpreted a range of roles, including Handel’s Rodelinda, Belinda (Dido and Aeneas), Serpina (La serva padrona), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), and Adele (Die Fledermaus). She is also an avid concert soloist, from Bach and Vivaldi to Beethoven and Verdi. Moreover, as the Academic Coordinator of the Brisch Center for Historical Performance, Danielle specializes in historically informed performance and style embodiment. Deeply dedicated to classical music education for the community, Danielle helped found the Oklahoma City chapter of Opera on Tap, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, to provide performing opportunities to local professional singers in the metropolitan area. She regularly programs, performs, and emcees monthly events. Additionally, she is an eager advocate of new music and new works. In 2021-22, she produced the timely and poignant new Oklahoma opera, No Justice, No Peace, a timely and poignant opera.

As a pedagogue, Danielle has taught hundreds of students over the past decade in her voice and piano private studio as well as past applied studios at Oklahoma City Community College and the University of Central Oklahoma. Teaching through a holistic approach, Danielle works with vocalists to develop functional technique and free-flowing tone, as well as cultivate communication skills to clearly express motivated emotion.

Danielle holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Oklahoma as well as two Masters of Music (Opera Performance; Music History/Literature) both from Wichita State University.

UNDERGRAD

• Music History: Survey I
• Music History: Survey II
• Singing Diction Seminar: German, French 
• Singing Diction Seminar: English, Italian, Latin

GRAD

• Introduction to Music Research
• Opera History
• Music History Pedagogy
• Writing About Music
• Special Topics in Music History (Eighteenth-century) 
• Survey of Music History - Graduate Asynchronous Online Designer
• Introduction to Music Research - Graduate  Asynchronous Online Designer

Doctorate of Musical Arts December 17, 2021

University of Oklahoma

Online Instructor Training Certification December 2019

University of Central Oklahoma

Master of Music in Music History/Literature July 24, 2015

Wichita State University

Master of Music in Opera Performance May 2014

Wichita State University

Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance May 2012

Wichita State University,