MUMH 6770 "New Types of Opera in the Twentieth Century"
Margaret Notley
Spring 2004
Innovations in theater accompanied the frequently noted changes in worldview that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Critics have devoted a great deal of attention to the new types of spoken theater. This course will focus on the relevance of the innovations to opera, a topic that has not been thoroughly assessed in the existing critical literature.
In this course, we shall be looking above all at operas that fall into the following categories, which either came into existence in the early twentieth century or became more important at that time: one-act operas, epic theater, and Literaturoper. Students will be asked to consider the operas that we study both as musical works and as works for theater.