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How to Listen to and Understand Opera (32 lectures, 45 minutes/lecture) Course No. 740

Taught by Robert Greenberg San Francisco Performances Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley

For more than 400 years, opera has been one of the most popular performing arts.

Geniuses-Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini-produced some of the landmark artistic achievements of all time in this form.

With Professor Robert Greenberg to show you how, you can learn to understand, appreciate-even to love-opera in just 24 hours of lectures that are a pleasure to hear.

Armed with the knowledge of opera gained from this course, you will understand how music has the power to reveal truths beyond the spoken word; how opera is a unique marriage of words and music in which the whole is far greater than its parts. You will learn the reasons for opera's enduring popularity. And you will be able to explore in greater depth the extraordinary and compelling world of opera.

There are two points about this course that cannot be captured in the discussion of its structure that follows. You see them here:

The music is transcendently beautiful. In this course, you will listen to some of the most extraordinary artistic works of all time. Professor Greenberg is to the lecture what Mozart was to opera. Brilliant, irreverent toward his subject and yet awed by it, ingenious in his approach to ensure that his work will have its intended effect on the listener. Customers who have taken this course report: "Dr Greenberg performed a miracle-he made me enjoy opera." "Now I understand why I already loved opera." "Excellent course! Professor Greenberg gives a lively, informative presentation that opens the heart to love opera as well as the mind to understand it!" The history of opera is traced from its beginning in the early 17th century to around 1924. The lectures examine landmark operas; musical, cultural, and social developments that influenced opera's growth; and the influence of national languages and cultures on opera.

Part I: The Full Flower and Its Origins

The first eight lectures are foundational. You examine the origins of opera and the adaptations of other musical forms that allowed opera to achieve its full effects, first accomplished in Monteverdi's Orfeo of 1607.

But Professor Greenberg does not hide the result while waiting on history to get us there: the course opens with one of the most powerful moments in opera-the dramatically loaded aria "Nessun dorma" ("No one shall sleep") from Giacomo Puccini's Turandot.

In Turandot, you are exposed to opera's unique incorporation of soliloquy, dialogue, scenery, action, and continuous music into an incredibly expressive and exciting whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

This famous aria shows us the power of the composer in creating music that goes beyond the words of the libretto to evoke unspoken thoughts and feelings-that which cannot be said in words alone.

The study continues with a discussion of how music can flesh out a dramatic character and evoke the unconscious state. You are introduced to operatic archetypes such as Figaro and Carmen.

You examine the Renaissance, its rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman culture and the evolution of the madrigal, ultimately rejected in favor of a more expressive vocal medium: early opera.

Part I of the course concludes with an analysis of the first successful attempt to combine words and music into musical drama, Monteverdi's Orfeo of 1607.

Part II: The Aria, the Golden Age, Opera Seria, Opera Buffa

Recitative, the essence of Monteverdi's style, made music subservient to words but, because of its forward-driving nature, recitative cannot express personal reflection.

You learn how the invention of aria gave opera composers a powerful tool to stop the dramatic action for moments of self-reflection.

Gluck's reforms and his Orfeo ed Euridice of 1762 are addressed as the starting point for the modern opera repertory. The explosion of operas in the Golden Age/Dark Age of opera is discussed.

You learn how different voice types are assigned different roles, and how this has varied by culture.

The rise of opera seria and its characteristics are discussed, along with an analysis of the second act of Mozart's Idomeneo-opera seria transcendent.

You examine the development of opera buffa, from its origins in the popular folklore of the Commedia dell'Arte to its eventual replacement of opera seria.

Mozart's brilliant The Marriage of Figaro is discussed as one of the greatest contributions to the opera buffa genre.

Part III: Rossini and Verdi: The Development of French Opera

You see how the Italian language and culture gave rise to the bel canto style of opera, with its comic plots, one-dimensional characters, appealing melodies, and florid melodic embellishments.

The highly pressurized business of opera in the 18th century is revealed. (Rossini once remarked, "In my time, all the impresarios of Italy were bald by 30.") You are introduced to Rossini's The Barber of Seville of 1816 as the quintessential bel canto opera.

You learn how Giuseppi Verdi broke the bel canto mold; how he dominated Italian opera for over half a century by virtue of his lyricism, his emphasis on human emotions and psychological insight, and his use of the orchestra and parlante to drive the dramatic action and maintain musical continuity.

Verdi's Otello is discussed as one of the greatest operas of all time.

You next study French opera and how it developed as a distinctly different genre from Italian opera.

Nineteenth-century French opera is addressed. Grand opera, opéra comique and lyric opera are examined as distinctive French genres and Act 2 of Bizet's dramatically powerful Carmen is analyzed.

Part IV: Wagner, Strauss, and German Opera. Russian Opera. Puccini.

You see how German singspiel, a play with music, grew from humble origins as a lower class entertainment to high art with Mozart's The Rescue from the Harem (1782) and The Magic Flute (1791). You learn how Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz established 19th-century German opera.

You then study Richard Wagner: the man, his personal beliefs, musical theories, and operatic innovations. You see how Wagner went back to the ancient Greek ideal for inspiration and how he conceived the idea of an all-encompassing artwork, or music drama, in which the role of the orchestra is that of a purveyor of unspoken truths.

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is discussed as the most influential composition of the 19th century, aside from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The subject of late Romantic German opera is addressed and exemplified by Richard Strauss and his controversial opera Salome.

You examine Russian opera and nationalism. The late development of Russian opera is outlined from Mikhail Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila to Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. You see how the Russian language shaped the vocal style of Russian opera.

The course concludes with an overview of opera verismo, a 19th- and 20th-century genre that favors depictions of the darker side of the human condition.

The pivotal second act of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca is discussed as a transcendent example of opera verismo.

Finally, you hear part of a scene from Richard Strauss's Capriccio in which the essence of opera is debated. Is it words or is it music? It is neither. It is an indefinable combination of both, with the whole greater than the parts.

Course Lecture Titles

01 Introduction and Words and Music, I 02 Introduction and Words and Music, II 03 A Brief History of Vocal Expression in Music, I 04 A Brief History of Vocal Expression in Music, II 05 The Invention of Opera and Monteverdi's Orfeo, I 06 The Invention of Opera and Monteverdi's Orfeo, II 07 The Invention of Opera and Monteverdi's Orfeo, III 08 The Invention of Opera and Monteverdi's Orfeo, IV 09 The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart's Idomeneo, I 10 The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart's Idomeneo, II 11 The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart's Idomeneo, III 12 The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart's Idomeneo, IV 13 The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, I 14 The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, II 15 The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, III 16 The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, IV 17 The Bel Canto Style and Rossini's The Barber of Seville, I 18 The Bel Canto Style and Rossini's The Barber of Seville, II 19 Verdi and Otello, I 20 Verdi and Otello, II 21 Verdi and Otello, III 22 Verdi and Otello, IV 23 French Opera, I 24 French Opera, II 25 German Opera Comes of Age 26 Richard Wagner and Tristan und Isolde, I 27 Richard Wagner and Tristan und Isolde, II 28 Late Romantic German Opera-Richard Strauss and Salome 29 Russian Opera, I 30 Russian Opera, II 31 Verismo, Puccini, and Tosca, I 32 Verismo, Puccini, and Tosca, II