How to Listen to and Understand Opera

Overview

Discover the great beauty and high artistic achievement of opera with this brilliant course by acclaimed musicologist Robert Greenberg. For more than 400 years, opera has been one of the most popular performing arts. With Professor Robert Greenberg, you can learn to understand, appreciate—even to love—opera in just 32 lectures that are a pure pleasure to hear.

The history of opera is traced from its beginning in the early 17th century to around 1924. The lectures examine landmark operas, musical, cultural, and social developments that influenced opera’s growth, and the influence of national languages and cultures on opera. From Orfeo, Turandot, and Idomeneo to The Barber of Seville, Tristan und Isolde, and Boris Godunov, you’ll listen to excerpts from some of the most extraordinary artistic works of all time—the works that have come to define the power, beauty, and importance of this form.

And you’ll meet the musical geniuses responsible for creating them, including Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, and Glinka. With the knowledge of opera contained in these lectures, you’ll understand how music has the power to reveal truths beyond the spoken word—how opera is a unique marriage of words and music in which the whole is far greater than its parts. You’ll learn the reasons for opera’s enduring popularity. And you’ll be able to explore in great depth this extraordinary and compelling world.

List of Video Lectures

1. Introduction and Words and Music, I

47 min

• Introduction and Words and Music, II

45 min

• A Brief History of Vocal Expression in Music, I

44 min

• A Brief History of Vocal Expression in Music, II

47 min

• Invention of Opera and Monteverdi’s Orfeo, I

46 min

• Invention of Opera and Monteverdi’s Orfeo, II

45 min

• Invention of Opera and Monteverdi’s Orfeo, III

45 min

• Invention of Opera and Monteverdi’s Orfeo, IV

47 min

• The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart’s Idomeneo, I

45 min

10. The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart’s Idomeneo, II

45 min  

11. The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart’s Idomeneo, III

46 min  

• The Growth of Opera, the Development of Italian Opera Seria, and Mozart’s Idomeneo, IV

46 min  

• The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, I

46 min  

• The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, II

44 min  

• The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, III

46 min  

16. The Rise of Opera Buffa and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, IV

47 min  

17. The Bel Canto Style and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, I

46 min  

• The Bel Canto Style and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, II

48 min  

• Verdi and Otello, I

46 min  

• Verdi and Otello, II

46 min  

• Verdi and Otello, III

46 min  

• Verdi and Otello, IV

45 min  

23. French Opera, I

45 min  

24. French Opera, II

46 min  

• German Opera Comes of Age

48 min  

• Richard Wagner and Tristan und Isolde, I

45 min  

• Richard Wagner and Tristan und Isolde, II

46 min  

• Late Romantic German Opera: Richard Strauss and Salome

46 min  

29. Russian Opera, I

46 min  

30. Russian Opera, II

42 min  

31. Verismo, Puccini, and Tosca, I

46 min  

32. Verismo, Puccini, and Tosca, II

46 min