Kii-Ming Lo

Kii-Ming Lo was born on November 4, 1954 in Keelung, Taiwan. After initial studies of textile technology at Fu Jen Catholic University (Taipei), which she completed with a bachelor's degree, she went to Germany in order to study musicology. From 1980 to 1988 she studied musicology (Ludwig Finscher, Herbert Schneider), sinology (Günther Debon) and ethnology (Georg Pfeffer) at Heidelberg University. She received her doctorate in 1989 under the supervision of Ludwig Finscher with the dissertation »Turandot« auf der Opernbühne (Turandot on the opera stage), which since then has become a reference book on the subject [Frankfurt / Bern (Peter Lang) 1996]. From 1989 to 2002 she taught as professor of musicology at Fu-Jen Catholic University / Taipei; in 1999 she was made "full professor of musicology". From 2002 until her retirement in 2020, she taught as professor of musicology at the Music Department of the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in Taipei.[1]

Kii-Ming Lo’s research and teaching activities at NTNU brought about a gradual professionalization of the discipline of musicology in Taiwan under the influence of the German musicological tradition. For more than a decade after her appointment as professor, she remained the only musicologist from Taiwan who actively participated in the congresses of the International Musicological Society (IMS). Since 1999 Kii-Ming Lo has organized several international musicological symposia, often in collaboration with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in Taipei. Especially the international congresses on Giacomo Puccini (2008) and Richard Wagner (2013) have met with universal acclaim.[2] Her numerous publications include several monographs in Chinese, including a biography of the Taiwanese composer Pan Hwang-Long, and several scholarly articles in Taiwanese musicological journals. Kii-Ming Lo has published numerous articles in German, English and Italian in congress reports and specialist journals. Together with her husband, the musicologist Jürgen Maehder, she has published a series of Chinese monographs on the history of opera). Her areas of research include the opera history of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, especially the "Turandot" operas by Giacomo Puccini and Ferruccio Busoni, the interrelation between music and literature, especially the history of the opera libretto in Germany with special attention to the 20th century German »Literaturoper« (an opera based on a pre-existing literary text, therefore without the intervention of a librettist), the history of opera film with a special focus on Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, the interrelation between Asia and Europe in the European music theater and contemporary music in Taiwan.

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