Revealed: The 8 Operas That Changed the World
Audio: John Gibbons reveals (and defends) the operas to be covered in his next Graham School course, and discusses some of the works he cosidered, but didn't make the cut. 10-minute audio file.
Barring another epic blast of #Chiberia weather, an intrepid bunch of "Gleacher Creatures" will gather at Chicago's Graham School tomorrow (January 7) for "8 Operas That Changed the World." So, which operas made the elite eight? Some, I presume, will be obvious to opera buffs, and others may surprise you. In this ten-minute audio recording I discuss what drove the selections -- not every choice is a "greatest" opera, or even, necessarily, the favorite from each composer. I also mention some worthy contenders which, for various reasons, were omitted.
Comments are welcome - from students and blog readers equally!
No time to listen? The selected operas are:
- Claudio Monteverdi's last opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea) of 1642.
- Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata (The Marriage of Figaro, or The Day of Madness) of 1786
- Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto (1851)
- Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (1865)
- Modest Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov (1874)
- Georges Bizet, Carmen (1875)
- Richard Strauss, Salome (1905)
- Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925)
Smetana: Date Revisions and Slight change for Wk. 1
The Dates I would like to use for Smetana Wk. 1 should be as follows: Macbeth and the Witches, 1859, Brandenburgers in Bohemia, 1864, Bartered Bride, 1866, Rev. 1869, Dalibor, 1867, Libuse, 1872. I lazily asked Bonnie to put in dates for Smetana, and I think she found first performance and or revision dates. I will change it in the on-line syllabus, but the handouts tomorrow will need to be adjusted. Printing materials for use in class may prove problematical for a while, there have been significant protocol changes in the Graham School hand-out printing operations, to which I’ll need to adjust, so online materials could very well be more up to date than actual handouts. Macbeth and the Wiches as well as Brandenburgers in Bohemia will be included tomorrow. That stuff is too good to lose!