17522

WiSe 18/19: Italian Opera on Stage from Monteverdi to Verdi

Tatiana Korneeva

Comments

The seminar will examine some of the major masterpieces of the great tradition of Italian opera. 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 by Giovanni Francesco Busenello and Claudio Monteverdi, L’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1642), Giacinto Andrea Cicognini and Francesco Cavalli’s Giasone (Jason, 1649), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte’s Don Giovanni (1787), and Giuseppe Verdi and Francesco Maria Piave’s Rigoletto (1851) will allow us to explore how opera functions as dramatic form and the mechanics of its proliferation to stages across Europe. Opera will also be examined as spectacle and as a multi-media performance art, and from the perspectives of genre, economics, modes of production, and cultural expression. The course will also explore what happens to the libretto and the musical score when they are adapted for the stage, and consider the practical and interpretative functions of contemporary opera direction. Students will have the opportunity to assess the approaches of some renowned directors, and to develop their own interpretative solutions to staging opera. The course will include a guest lecture by theatre and opera director, Brad Sisk, and viewing of L’Incoronazione di Poppea at the Staatsoper Berlin. The course will be taught in English. Reading and viewing materials will be provided via Blackboard at the beginning of the course. close