Composers: Mozart/DaPonte

Catalog description

This course will center on the biography, works, and cultural context of a specific composer or group of composers. As well as introducing students to the musical works of the composer(s), the course will examine issues such as reception history, the canon, mechanisms of cult formation, authorship and attribution, identity, historical and social contexts, and nationalism and patriotism. Fulfills Arts and Letters Requirement. Mozart’s meeting with Lorenzo Da Ponte in Vienna in 1783 sparked one of the most successful collaborations in opera history between a poet and a composer, generating three works that are frequently staged in today’s theatres worldwide, The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790). We will study the literary sources of these operas, the poetic and operatic conventions of the time, and the issues (such as love, power, and gender) that these works raise, by also comparing different versions on video. The course is intended for non-majors, but music majors are welcome.