Mus M510:  Opera 1780-1880 and Operatic Outsiders
Prof:  Zukowski

	This course will devote special focus to operatic portrayals
of the outsider.  The nineteenth century produced many of the social
hierarchies and divisive categorizations that we have come to
challenge today.  Musical theater of this era was populated by
figures banished to the margins of nineteenth-century society – the
Moor, the Jew, the prostitute, the consumptive, the madwoman, the
pervert.  Opera itself was the musical theater of the privileged –
how did it draw upon, contribute to, and challenge belief about
figures excluded from the European bourgeoisie who formed its
audience?  How do techniques of compositional style and staging
provoke us to root for or revile a character?  We will explore these
questions through close study of late 18- and 19th-century operas
central to today’s repertoire, including  Mozart’s Magic Flute and
Don Giovanni,  Bellini’s I Puritani, Verdi’s La Traviata and Aida,
and Wagner’s Das Rheingold. This course will emphasize musical
analysis, interpretation of texts, and investigation of 19th-century
culture.  Open to graduate students.