COML 3971 - Books Turned into Operas

(crosslisted) ENGL 3713, ROMS 3971
(HB) (CA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.

C. Chase.

How and why is a book “translated” into an opera? We will study several such works and the operas they inspired: Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Massenet’s Werther, Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, Holten’s The Visit of the Royal Physician, and the movie A Royal Affair, a bridge between opera and novel. There will be opportunities for original historical research. What is so fascinating about the literary texts the operas (and the movie) draw on? It is partly their formal and linguistic qualities and partly their relation to history. Each of the literary works we study reflects the crisis of authority dating from the French Revolution; each of the operas in some way “manages” historical experience by creating aesthetic pleasure. We will see how.