Opera, Media, Technologies

Graduate / Professional

Opera has been assigned—and continues to assume—important roles in genealogies of technical media. This seminar explores both what media archaeology and other recent approaches in media studies and science and technology studies hold for an understanding of the nature of opera, and what opera might in turn contribute to a historically expanded perspective on electronic and digital multimedia. Understanding opera as a technical medium will also help address the latest operatic transformations in the digital age. Topics include theoretical discourses on eventness and mediation, strategies of audiovisual immersion, the development of illusionist stage devices, the function of screens, the orchestra as technology, and Wagner’s ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk, as well as examinations of the medial configurations in various operatic renditions, from the Baroque picture-frame stage to HD broadcasts, from Florentine intermedi to site-specific experiments, from Bayreuth to Zoom opera. Reading knowledge of Western musical notation is helpful but not required of students from outside the Department of Music. F 9:25am-11:20am