GERST 3740 - Opera and Culture

(crosslisted)
(also MUSIC 3222, PMA 3723)(HB) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Prerequisite: any 3-credit music course or proficiency in German or Italian. A section in German will be available for 1 extra credit (GERST 3741).

A. Groos.

This course is designed to explore interrelationships between opera and cultural practice, using examples principally from the German and Italian repertories (e.g., Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Strauss). Lectures and discussions will examine operatic representations of central issues in the emergence of modern culture in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: politics and national identity, issues of gender and sexuality, orientalism, representations of madness and disease. Depending on student interest, a final segment of the semester may extend our focus into twentieth-century opera or other media such as film and theater.