Module MUSI2651: Studies in the History of Opera

Department: Music

MUSI2651: Studies in the History of Opera

Prerequisites

• (MUSI1231 Historical Trends and Issues of the 17th and 18th Centuries) OR (MUSI1xx1 Historical Studies 1: The Long Nineteenth Century)

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• The module will engage with key intellectual issues attendant on the development of opera from the late Renaissance to the present day. These will include (but will not necessarily be limited to) the following: conceptions of opera as drama; changing fashions in operatic subject matter; approaches to operatic staging; technical issues relating to the purely musical aspects of operatic stage works, such as the role of the orchestra and approaches to vocal writing, word-setting and formal organisation. The lectures and seminars will focus on key works composed between c. 1600 and the present day, which will be considered in detail from a variety of perspectives. The course will build on the critical and analytical skills imparted in first year, and the students will be required to bring them to bear on more sophisticated tasks.

Content

• Typical topics covered might include:
• Opera in the late Renaissance and Baroque periods: the development of opera seria and opera buffa; the rise of the virtuoso singer: the stage works of Handel.
• Gluck and the reaction against Metastasian models
• Mozart as dramatist
• Italian bel canto: Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti
• Opera and Romantic nationalism
• Italian opera in the later nineteenth century: Verdi; Puccini and the emergence of verismo
• Post-Wagnerian opera in Germany and Austria: Strauss and Schreker
• Expressionist operas: Schoenberg and Berg
• The early twentieth-century: Debussy, Janáček
• Later twentieth-century developments: Shostakovich, Britten

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be provided with an opportunity to deepen their understanding of opera as an art form and its evolving relation to social/cultural matrix from which it emerged, as well as to broaden their knowledge of core repertoire.

• Students will learn to apply appropriate methods of assessment from a broad range of critical standpoints, notably the historical, cultural and political, drawing especially on hermeneutic methodologies which seek to elucidate the relationships between artworks and their social/cultural context.

• The ability to identify and conceptualise key issues in the study of music from this repertoire, situate ideas in context, engage in critically informed argument and apply appropriate analytical methodologies.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• The module will be delivered by alternating lectures and seminars, in which a lecture introducing a particular development in the history of opera will be followed by a seminar that concentrates on set works that are representative of the trend in question. The students will be required to submit two summative assignments (a class presentation and an essay), and formative exercises will be set in preparation for these.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Shorter 500- to 1,000-word essays in preparation for the summative tasks.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University