MUS 244
Opera Since Einstein Spring 2016
Division I Writing Skills
Cross-listed THEA 243
This is not the current course catalog

After 400 years, we might assume we know what “opera” is. However, in recent decades the genre has moved far beyond our preconceptions. This course asks us to examine opera of the last forty years with fresh eyes and ears, expanding our understanding of the term to include the interdisciplinary, multimedia, cross-cultural work that has been created by composers, directors (Peter Greenaway, Peter Sellars, Robert Wilson), filmmakers, choreographers, and visual artists in that period. Using the 1976 premiere of Philip Glass’s seminal Einstein on the Beach as a starting point, we will examine such diverse works as Adams’s Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, Glass’s Satyagraha, Tan Dun’s Marco Polo, Neuwirth’s Lost Highway, Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland, Andriessen’s Writing to Vermeer, Ades’s Powder Her Face, Muhly’s Two Boys, Monk’s Atlas, and Ashley’s television opera, Perfect Lives. We will also seize the opportunity to study Greenstein’s new opera project, concurrently under development for production during the semester.