MUSI 201 - Opera

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2014/15b: How Is Opera Made? Is opera’s survival really in peril? Despite the cries that “Opera is a dead dinosaur!” at the recent closing of New York City Opera, the near failure of San Diego Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera’s recent labor dispute, there has never been a more thriving start-up culture of opera in the United States than today. What makes our need for opera so strong, and why is it so difficult to create? At its inception in Italy, opera sprang from the efforts of literary minded societies, but over time it has increasingly become perceived as a musical form. As opera enters its fifth century, directors increasingly hold center stage in the opera world. At the heart of opera’s existence has been the modern history of singing itself. Will opera make it through another century, and if it does, what will become of it? This course will look at how an opera is made; not only through a general survey of opera’s history in its first four centuries, but through close examination in films and performance history of seminal operas by Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, Verdi and Wagner – their literary origins, the social milieu in which they were created, the visual and musical artists that created them. Mr. Minter.

Prerequisite: one unit in one of the following: art; drama; Italian, French, German, or English literatures; music; or permission of the instructor.

Alternate years.