OPERA: THE FIRST 100 YEARS

Three-Week Course

Dates: Three Mondays, March 23–April 6
Time: 6–7:30 p.m.
Location: See Course Locations and Parking (PLEASE NOTE: for meeting April 13th only, Music Recital Hall (MRH) building) page
Course Fee: $85 (discounted to $68 for select groups)

Andrew Dell'Antonio, Ph.D., Music, UT Austin

"Dramma per Musica" ("drama for/through music") begins as one small facet of Italian élite court entertainment around 1600. The tradition is eventually expanded through a commercial model, focused on entrepreneurial competition between troupes of musicians and singers. Within a century, this increasingly elaborate type of multimedia show becomes upper-class Europe's most popular cultural phenomenon, and this is when the term "opera" (which originally just means "work") becomes its common descriptive. This short course will trace the first 100 years of the Italian operatic tradition, exploring both its social and historical contexts and its gorgeous music. The final session will focus on Handel's Rodelinda in a fascinating and powerful modern staging.

Andrew Dell’Antonio currently holds the titles of Associate Professor, Chair of Graduate Studies, and Head of the Musicology/Ethnomusicology Division at The University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music. At the university, Professor Dell’Antonio has received the 2007 UT College of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2001 he was one of a small group of university faculty members selected as fellows for the inaugural year of The University of Texas Humanities Institute. During the academic year 2001-02, he was Mellon Fellow at the Harvard-Villa I Tatti Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy. He has also served as President of the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, and as Secretary of the national Council of that Society and a member of its Board. His foremost research interest is the process of listening—how it has been characterized and fostered from the 1600s to the present and how different modes of listening influence the social uses and cultural meanings of music.