Bio

Veronika Schenck lives in Aachen, Germany, where she began her university education in 2013. She spent a semester at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) studying Spanish and history to become a high school teacher, while at the same time preparing for the entrance exam for music studies.

From 2014 to 2021, she continued her studies in Frankfurt am Main, at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (HfMDK), specialising in the cello as her principal instrument. She also studied Spanish and History at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität (GU), where she completed her studies with her final thesis, analysing the political potential of Pau Casals's oratorio El Pessebre.

She is currently undertaking her doctoral project, supervised by Professor Christoph Cornelißen and funded over the past few years by a scholarship from the Bischöfliche Studienförderung Cusanuswerk.

Project

At Faberllull, Veronika will work on her doctoral thesis examining musical nationalism between 1890 and 1939. She will look at how culture and politics interacted in institutions as representative as the opera.

The project focuses on attempts to catalanise the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. All the operas, which were perceived as Catalan by a section of the public, were forced to overcome various obstacles throughout their performance history as they were criticised from different political and aesthetic perspectives. Her research explores opposing perceptions, illustrating the complex tension between Catalan and Spanish nationalism.