MUSC 115 Topics in Vocal Music
A historical and cultural survey course of a select genre of vocal music, such as opera, song, musical theater, and choral music. Topics vary by semester and may satisfy different Core requirements.
Opera
Since its inception in late 16th-century Florence as a humanistic reimagining of Greek tragedy, opera has served as a catalyst for social and political change. The opera-loving agents advocating for this change have been diverse: philosophers (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Kwame Anthony Appiah), writers (Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison), and activists (Theodor Herzl, W. E. B. Dubois, Martin Luther King), among many others, including the late jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose legal career was dedicated to advocating for gender equality and women's rights. This iteration of this history-of-opera course will focus on the five operas that Justice Ginsburg wanted people to know: Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, Verdi's Otello, Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West, and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. In the first half of the course we will survey the history of opera in Europe, up to and including the two Mozart operas, which premiered in 1786 and 1787. We will study all five operas with attention to their plots' legal and gender relations. Students will learn opera's forms and styles and read primary documents written as responses to individual operas and opera writ large, all with the goal of understanding these operas' political, philosophical, and cultural contexts as well as their messages for us today. No prior musical experience is required. Additional Core Requirement: Regional Focus.
Core Requirements Met
- Fine Arts
- Pre-1800
- Regional Focus