LIT 158A Introduction to Music Drama

Introduction to opera from Mozart to Berg. Close analysis of text setting, musical form, dramaturgy, and performance (singing/acting), with particular attention to politics, gender, subject-formation, and opera's constitutive role in the rise, as well as critique, of modern bourgeois culture. No previous training in music theory required, although some affinity for classical music desirable. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.