3-3-0

Is it music or is it drama? The balance changes through the ages, but opera is always lyrical, emotional, sensational. This course will trace the evolution of opera from the earliest experiments in 1600 through the elaborate productions of the High Baroque; the birth of modern opera with Gluck and Mozart; the Golden Age of Italian bel canto from Rossini and Bellini through Verdi and Puccini; German opera from Beethoven to Wagner; and the new aesthetics of the 20th century, with Strauss, Berg and Stravinsky.