Olivia Wahnon de Oliveira

Biography


Olivia Wahnon de Oliveira has graduated from the University of Brussels (ULB) and has two Master’s degrees in Philosophy and Musicology (History of Arts). She completed her education by obtaining the Aggregation and the CAPAES.

She began her career at the Educational Department of the Brussels Royal Opera then moved to a scientific activity at the Brussel’s University as researcher in musicology for 7 years. She then starting teaching.

She carried out research in regards to music publishing and music merchants in Liège in the 18th century. After that, she started working at the Royal Belgian Library where she worked on archives of Franz André, famous conductor at the INR (Belgian radio back in the day).

As of the year 2000, she also started teaching: first as professor at the university-level school Paul-Henri Spaak, she also is a lecturer at the university-level school Léonard de Vinci and a professor at the Superior Institute of Art History and assistant professor at the ULB (University of Brussels).

In 2008, she makes a career move when she enters the Royal Conservatory of Brussels as Head-Librarian of the prestigious library of this institution. She is also teaching there and teaches the Music Encyclopedia class. She is also methodological coordinator for students’ master thesis.

As librarian in one of the most renowned libraries in the world, Olivia Wahnon de Oliveira cares very much about the promotion of in-house collections through collaboration with concert programmes or exhibits, takes part into radio shows, writes online publications, is published in specialized press or is invited to speak at symposiums or congresses.

She put a lot of effort into developing collections of the Conservatory library and managed to take over the musical library CeBeDeM (Belgian centre of musical documentation), in 2015 when this institution closed, insuring the conservation of a collection of 350 meters of music scores of Belgian composers from the 20th century.

Olivia Wahnon de Oliveira regularly publishes articles in the Belgian Musicology Bulletin such as:

  • "Du Recueil général des opéra bouffons (Liège, 1771-85) ou de l’histoire d’une contrefaçon de plus en plus avouée" (vol. LI, 1997, pp. 101-135) ;
  • "Albert Zimmer (1874-1940): dévoilement d’une correspondance, révélation d’une intense vie musicale" (vol. LVI, 2002, pp. 53-98);
  • "Echanges épistolaires autour de la production de Wozzeck d’Alban Berg au Théâtre royal de la Monnaie en 1932" (vol. LVIII, 2004, pp. 251-286);
  • "Gevaert et l’édition de la musique ancienne" (vol. LXV, 2011, pp.71-95);
  • "La collection Rossini de la Bibliothèque du Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles augmentée de deux documents autographes", (vol. LXVII, 2013, pp. 283-290);
  • "Le Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale" (vol. LXIX, 2015, pp. 283-304) ;
  • "De l’intérêt de Fétis pour les instruments Sax à la création de la classe de saxophone" (1867) au Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles (LXX, 2016, pp. 191-209).

She also publishes articles in other scientific journals or symposium deeds and produces other publications such as facsimile of a piece by Jean-Jacques Robson, Piesce de clavecin, op. 1 (Liège, B. Andrez, 1749), CEDESOM-ULB, 2003 or another book on the work of Franz André (1893-1975), radio conductor. Correspondence and archives, Brussels, Belgian Royal Library, 2003.

As librarian, she launched in 2014, along with Castejon Music Editions and the Department of Early Music of the Royal Conservatory, a collection of scores titled Unpublished pieces from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels which offer musical manuscripts preserved in the library as well as works by Anton Fils (2017), Charles-Joseph Van Helmont (2016), Carl-Philipp-Emanuel Bach (2015), Henri-Jacques de Croes (2015) and François-Joseph Fétis (2014) that have recently been published for the first time.

Olivia Wahnon de Oliveira is also regularly invited to present concerts or operas at BOZAR and at the Opera House La Monnaie.

In Octobre 2023, madame Wahnon de Oliveira becomes the Conservatoire Principal.