17525

WiSe 17/18: From Libretto to Stage: Italian Opera in Performance

Tatiana Korneeva

Comments

This seminar will examine some of the significant masterpieces of the great tradition of Italian opera seria. The course will outline how Italian opera, born of courtly entertainment, takes root in the special social and economic environment of seventeenth-century Venice and there develops the aesthetic characteristics we recognize as opera today. The analysis of the landmark works of the sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera librettos by Giovanni Francesco Busenello and Claudio Monteverdi, L’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1643), Giacinto Andrea Cicognini and Francesco Cavalli’s, Giasone (Jason, 1649), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Caterino Mazzolà’s La Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus, 1791), and Giuseppe Verdi and Francesco Maria Piave’s La Traviata (1853) will allow us to explain how opera functions as dramatic form and the mechanics of its proliferation to stages across Europe. Moving beyond the analysis of librettos and musical scores, special attention will be devoted to reception of opera in varying social and historical contexts and contemporary performances. We will also explore what happens to opera when it is adapted for the screen and how does an opera change when it becomes a movie or a video. The course will be taught in English. Reading materials will be provided via the website Blackboard at the beginning of the course. close