Musc 730: Staging Baroque Opera Today

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2014

This graduate seminar examines stagings of Baroque operas available on video.  In particular we will discuss:  1. How today’s directorial approaches impact the relationships between text and performance, and how, in turn, these relationships reflect a particular view of history;  2. The role of the singer as compared to that of the actor in theater, and the relationships between singer and character (both historically and today); 3. The permeable boundaries of opera as spectacle in its relationships with other genres (oratorio, for example) and art forms (dance and visdeo art, for example); 4. theorizations of theater/performance vs. those of opera.  Other topics will include the role of the various agents of production that collaborate in opera production, the role of mediation that arises in today’s videorecordings, and the current research directions concerning staging, acting, and performance practices during the Baroque period. INSTRUCTOR: Mauro Calcagno