MUSICAL THEATRE HISTORY

The course aims to introduce attending students to the topical moments of musical theater.

The student will acquire basic notions on musical theater, both formal and historical; each work will be placed in the artistic context of its time.

The student should inquire about the main operatic titles, especially the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, using chronologies and he will find on the course homepage.

Opera and Media, old and new.

The crisis due to the covid 19 virus did not have to affect humanity to understand that the current fruition ratios of fundamental genres in western cultured music, such as opera, have changed. If before you were in more or less large theatrical rooms, or in open spaces of large capacity, such as the Arena of Verona, the great protagonist of today is the computer, which allows anyone interested, from the melomaniac to the simple passionate, to the specialist, to see shows that took place in every part of the world. Just take a few itineraries among the thousands possible offered by the opera on video website (https://www.operaonvideo.com/ ) to easily realize this.
The opera house, a true semiological monstrum in itself, is therefore experiencing a new popularity, and has significantly widened its receptive boundaries, thanks to the new media. The course will evaluate some of the main aspects of the use of the work on the screen, and the new situations that are created in society through videos, opera films and so on, always keeping in mind the maxim of one of major scholars of mass communication such as Marshall McLuhan: "the content of one medium is always another medium" - it is therefore the representation of one medium of mass communication in another, where some characteristics of the first end up within another. The awareness of the first floor, for example, has changed the acting style of the interpreters, favoring, for example, directives aimed at new receptive orientations.
There is no theater now that does not broadcast live shows. Naturally, to put it in Puccini's Schicchi, "one thing is lost, the other is found", therefore the radical fading of the historical, linguistic and poetic awareness of melodrama which, between the else, it is among the very few authentic prides of Italian art in the last two centuries. And that was also imagined as such in 2263, where an exceptional soprano like the Diva Plavalaguna of the Cinquième élement (1997) still intones the air of madness by Lucia di Lammermoor (https://www.youtube.com/ watch? v = 2246g7AzbMc).

The bibliography shown here is intended as an indication to address the problem; specific references will be published in the exam program. For the purposes of preparation it is good that the candidate reads essays that allow to understand the historical condition of the opera house, such as the book by Fabrizio Della Seta, Italia e Francia nell’Ottocento, Torino, EDT, 1993, and those of Guido Salvetti, La nascita del Novecento, ivi, 1993, e di Andrea Lanza, Il secondo Novecento, ivi, 1994. A fallback solution, however acceptable, is the consultation of the manual by MARIO CARROZZO, CRISTINA CIMAGALLI, Storia della musica occidentale. Dal Romanticismo alla musica elettronica, 3 voll., Milano, Armando, 2009: III, pp. 11-56, and 169-244, 285-350.

Homepage: http://www-5.unipv.it/girardi/2021_STM/STM_2021.htm
Exam Program:

Jay David Bolter e Richard Grusin, Remediation. Understanding New Media, Cambridge, The mit Press, 1999.
Carlo Cenciarelli, At the margins of the televisual: picture frames, loops and ‘cinematics’ in the paratexts of opera videos, «Cambridge Opera Journal», XXV, 2013, pp. 203¬-223
Freda Chapple, Digital Opera: Intermediality, Remediation and Education, in Intermediality in Theater and Performance, a cura di Freda Chapple e Chiel Kattenbelt, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2006, pp. 81-100
Michele Girardi, Remediation or opera on screen? Some Misunderstandings Regarding Recent Research , in Musical Listening in the Age of Technological Reproduction, a cura di Gianmario Borio, Farnham, Ashgate, 2015, pp. 107-132.
Melina Hesse, Don’t Look Now: Opera, Liveness, and the Televisual, «The Opera Quarterly», vol. 26, 2010, pp. 81-95
Christopher Morris, Digital diva: opera on video,«The Opera Quarterly», vol. 26, 2010, pp. 96-119;
Brian Large, voce «Filming», Oxford Music Online (iii. Theatrical Productions; url: http://www.oxfordmusiconiline.com:80/SJbscriber/article/grove/music/0901619 ). (ivi, i. Techniques); ultimo accesso 5 giugno 2020.
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London-New York, Routledge, 1993
Lionel Salter, alla voce «Television» Oxford Music Online (I. televisione and Music 1. Pure Music; url: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com:BO/SJbscriber/article/ grove/music/41850)
Renata Sconamiglio, Film operistici: un profilo analitico, in La musica nel cinema e nella televisione, a cura di Roberto Giuliani, Milano, Guerini, 2011, pp. 77-102
Emanuele Senici, Il video d’opera “dal vivo”. Testualizzazione e “liveness” nell’era digitale, «Il Saggiatore musicale», XVI/2, 2009 [ma 2010], pp. 273-312
–, Opera and Video: Technology and Spectatorship, a cura di Héctor J. Pérez, Bern, Peter Lang, 2012, pp. 45-70.

Further texts will be reported on the course page.

Oral examinatione: interview on the topics discussed in the course

Lectures, with the help of all the tools of computer science, to propose material in video, diagrams, read and discuss on-line bibliography, musical examples also on the piano.

Italian

During the first lesson the articulation of the course will be illustrated. Presence is recommended.

Ca ’Foscari applies Italian law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) for the support and accommodation services available to students with disabilities or specific learning disabilities. If you have a motor, visual, hearing or other disability (Law 17/1999) or a specific learning disorder (Law 170/2010) and you require support (classroom assistance, technological aids for carrying out exams or exams individualized, accessible format material, note retrieval, specialist tutoring to support the study, interpreters or other) contact the Disability and DSA office disita@unive.it.

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