Opera and Musical Theatre in Europe (1600-1750): The Birth of Multimedia Entertainment

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Critically engage with readings and lecture material to formulate your own arguments, and express these in written form.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Engage in debates about performance practice and the staging of Baroque opera.
• Critically assess and debate issues of genre, as they apply to the Baroque period.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The ways in which opera was produced, the economic and social underpinnings behind its production, and its political function.
• The main musical, textual, dramatic, and visual components of early modern European opera and musical theatre and the ways in which their socio-political contexts contributed to shaping them.
• The trajectory that brought opera and musical theatre from the court to commercial theatres and the main characteristics of the systems of patronage and of the open market.

Beginning with an overview of the main musical-theatrical genres of the period, you will go on to explore the social contexts in which they emerged, developed, and flourished, as well as the impact these environments had on their musical, textual, dramatic and visual components. You will follow the trajectories that brought private court entertainments to be exported and made available to larger audiences through the emergence of commercial theatres and the star system. Case studies tracing the transformations and consolidations of operatic and musical-theatrical conventions across Europe will include: from commedia dell’arte to opera in Italy; patronage, opera and musical theatre in the courts of Italy, France, Spain and England; the emergence of commercial theatres and the consolidation of conventions. Particular attention will be devoted to Handel’s activity in London, the public theatres, and the rising importance of the singer in the operatic marketplace.

Teaching methods include

• Lectures
• Class discussion
• Sharing of ideas and materials via Blackboard and other electronic resources

Learning activities include

• A wide range of reading
• Study of selected librettos and musical scores
• Study of selected video recordings
• Individual research
• Use of online resources to find newspaper articles and other material relating to the subjects being studied.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.