Courses
T561 Twentieth-Century Opera
Prof. Robert Hatten
Room MC 040
TR 11:15-12:30, MC 040
Enrollment limited to 12
Optional Lab: (guided) video viewing time TBa in the music library.
a theoretical/stylistic approach to major works in representative styles from Debussy to John adams and John Corigliano. a focus of the course will be the negotiation of dramatic meaning between "new" musical styles and the changing conventions of a formerly "traditional" genre (opera as the last refuge of the "high style"). Literary sources as relevant to musical style and dramatic structure will also be examined. The course will include readings and short analytical essays, and a major analytical paper on a chosen scene from a significant twentieth-century opera. Graduate students in voice are especially invited to enroll, given the focus on twentieth-century opera at Indiana this season. a tentative outline for the course (some of the later operas may be individual class presentations):
The modernist revolution in operatic form - Comparing 2 Janacek operas: Jenufa (1903) and The Makropoulos Case (1925)
Symbolist opera - Debussy and Maeterlinck: Pelleas et Melisande, Bartok and Balasz: Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Expressionist opera - Strauss and Wilde's decadence: Salome, Berg and Buchner: Wozzeck, (Zimmermann: Die Soldaten)
Approaches to neoclassicism - Strauss and Hoffmannstal: ariadne auf Naxos, Stravinsky and auden/Kallmann: The Rake's Progress (IU spring production)
The influence of musical theater - Gershwin: Porgy and Bess, (Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti)
Other national styles - Britten: Billy Budd or Turn of the Screw, Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Postmodern approaches to opera - Adams: Nixon in China, Corigliano: The Ghosts of Versailles
Besides the above, opera repertoire for student papers may be drawn from: Britten: The Rape of Lucretia and Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges (IU spring productions). Strauss: Elektra. Schoenberg: Erwartung, Die Gluckliche Hand, Moses und aron. Berg: Lulu. Other operas by Hindemith, Penderecki, Henze, Ligeti, Schnittke, Maxwell Davies, Eaton, Glass, adams, Bolcom
