3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

2016 marks the bicentennial of Rossini’s irreverent masterwork The Barber of Seville, which premiered in Rome in February 1816. Thirty years earlier, in 1786, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro had opened in Vienna. The two operas, based on the first two plays of Beaumarchais’ controversial “Figaro trilogy”, stage conflicts of class and gender, challenging the assumptions of the aristocracy as well as the ludicrous pretentions of the raising bourgeoisie. The same themes inform the post-modern portrayal of the past in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (1991), which ideally completes the musical afterlife of the trilogy. By studying how the plays were adapted to the opera stage within their different cultural and historical contexts, the course will explore the representation of the ideological, social, and political turmoil that, eventually, culminated in the French Revolution. The course will also include field trips and screenings of movies such as Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975) and Milos Forman’s Amadeus (1984). This course may be used to satisfy major requirements in both the French and Italian majors.