28503 - Musical Dramaturgy (LM)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing an approach to and a grasp of Musical Dramaturgy in its basic historical and critical principles.
According to the tenets of the discipline, opera is conceived as an intertwined system of verbal text, dramatic action, and music.
In turn, such a system requires a contextualization within the history of Western music as well as within the history of Western theatre and literature.
At the same time, the course aims at training students in the analysis of operatic music, from both a morphological and a theatrical perspective.

Course contents

 

(a) Venetian opera in the 17th century

(b) Giuseppe Verdi, La forza del destino

January 31st – April 7th, 2017

Dipartimento delle Arti (via Barberia 4, Salone Marescotti, 1st floor)

Tuesday, 5-7 pm; Thursday, 3-5 pm; Friday, 11-13 am

 

(a) History, dramaturgy and music in the Venetian opera of mid-17th century, with specific reference to the following operas: G. Badoaro - C. Monteverdi, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640); G. Strozzi - F. Sacrati, La finta pazza (1641); G.F. Busenello - C. Monteverdi (attr.), L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643); G.A. Cicognini - F. Cavalli, Giasone (1649); N. Minato - F. Cavalli, Il Xerse (1655).

(b) Dramaturgic and morphologic analysis of Verdi's opera (1862, 1869), in reference to its poetic source: A. de Saavedra, duque de Rivas, La fuerza del sino (1835).

Readings/Bibliography

Literature

All students shall bring along the libretto to Verdi's La forza del destino (version of 1869). The students enrolled in the Music Curriculum of the Laurea magistrale in Discipline della musica e del teatro (class LM45) will bring with them the score of Verdi's opera as well.

All students will bring along the anthology Libretti d'opera italiani dal Seicento al Novecento, edd. G. Gronda & P. Fabbri (Milan, Mondadori, 1997).

Fotocopies of the librettos of other operas dealt with during the  courses will be made available to the students. A wide data-base of Italian opera librettos is available at <corago.unibo.it>.

As for A. Saavedra's drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, there are two excellent pocket versions (with the Spanish original text): Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, ed. M.Á. Lama, introd. by E. Caldera, Barcelona, Crítica, 1994; Don Alvaro ou la Force du destin, ed. and French transl. by G. Zaragoza, Paris, Garnier Flammarion, 2002. A fotocopy of the Italian version by Faustino Sanseverino, Milan, Vallardi, 1850, will be made available.

The score of Verdi's opera (non the piano-vocal score!) is indispensable for students enrolled in the class LM45 (Music Curriculum): G. Verdi, La forza del destino, Milan, Ricordi (P.R. 1387), 2005.

Critical literature on 17th-century Venetian opera:

G. Staffieri, L'opera italiana. Dalle origini alle riforme del secolo dei Lumi (1590-1790), Rome, Carocci, 2014, chapt. 3 and 4;

P. Fabbri, Il secolo cantante. Per una storia del libretto d'opera in Italia nel Seicento, Rome, Bulzoni, 2003, chapt. II and III;

L. Bianconi - Th. Walker, Production, consumption and political function of seventeenth-century opera, in: Early Music History, IV, 1984, pp. 209-243;

E. Rosand, Opera in seventeenth-century Venice: the creation of a genre, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991.

Critical literature on Verdi's Forza del destino:

J. Budden, The operas of Verdi, II, London, Cassell, 1978, chapt. 9.

For the fundamentals of the musical dramaturgy:

- C. Dahlhaus, Drammaturgia dell'opera italiana, Torino, EDT, 2005;

- L. Bianconi - G. Pagannone, Piccolo glossario di drammaturgia musicale, in Insegnare il melodramma. Saperi essenziali, proposte didattiche, ed. G. Pagannone, Lecce-Iseo, Pensa MultiMedia, 2010, pp. 201-263 (also in <http://www.dar.unibo.it/it/attivita-didattica/supporti-alla-didattica/piccolo-glossario-di-drammaturgia-musicale>).

For the fundamentals of Italian versification:

- P. Fabbri, Metro e canto nell'opera italiana, Torino, EDT, 2007;

- L. Bianconi, Sillaba, quantità, accento, tono, in: Il Saggiatore musicale, XII, 2005, pp. 183-218 (also in <http://www.saggiatoremusicale.it/rivista/XII_2005_1/Bianconi%202005b.pdf>); (in addition, have a look at <http://www.dar.unibo.it/it/attivita-didattica/supporti-alla-didattica/appunti-di-metrica>).

An excellent reading book on opera (La forza del destino included): F. d'Amico, Forma divina. Saggi sull'opera lirica e il balletto, Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2012.

Teaching methods

Assessment methods

Office hours

See the website of Lorenzo Gennaro Bianconi