MUSC 115 Topics in Opera

Since its beginnings in late 16th-century Florence opera has occupied the most diverse of minds: whether lovers of authority (from Louis XIV to Rudy Giuliani) or lovers of the folk (from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Rufus Wainwright); whether masters of horror (from Edgar Allen Poe to William Friedkin) or masters of the humane (from Søren Kierkegaard to Toni Morrison); whether purveyors of the scholarly (from Friedrich Nietzsche to Kwame Anthony Appiah) or purveyors of the popular (from Scott Joplin and George Gershwin to Beyoncé Knowles and Woody Allen). In this historical survey course we will examine this diversity of responses to and in opera by studying 1) the precise musical forms and styles of the most famous operas and 2) the primary source documents written as responses to individual operas and opera writ large. We will thus study individual operas in their political philosophical and cultural contexts. Required listening and reading will be supplemented by required trips to the Los Angeles Opera for rehearsals of operas by Mozart Verdi and Puccini. No prior musical experience is required.