Module overview
Aims and Objectives
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding
Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
- The main musical, textual, dramatic, and visual components of early modern European opera and musical theatre and the ways in which their socio-political contexts contributed to shaping them.
- The ways in which opera was produced, the economic and social underpinnings behind its production, and its political function.
- The trajectory that brought opera and musical theatre from the court to commercial theatres and the main characteristics of the systems of patronage and of the open market.
Transferable and Generic Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- Critically engage with readings and lecture material to formulate your own arguments, and express these in a clear and compelling in way written form.
Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- Critically assess and debate issues of genre, as they apply to the Baroque period, citing multiple sources to support your arguments.
- Engage authoritatively in debates about performance practice and the staging of Baroque opera.
Syllabus
Learning and Teaching
Teaching and learning methods
Type | Hours |
---|---|
Teaching | 24 |
Independent Study | 126 |
Total study time | 150 |
Resources & Reading list
Textbooks
Rosand, Ellen (1991). Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burrows, Donald (1994). Handel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stein, Louise (1993). Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-Century Spain. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Anthony, James R (1973). French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau. London: Batsford.
Harris, Ellen T. ed. (1989). The Librettos of Handel’s Operas: A Collection of Seventy-One Librettos Documenting Handel’s Operatic Career. 13 vols. New York: Garland Press.
Carter, Tim and John Butt (2005). The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
LaRue, C. Steven (1995). Handel and His Singers: The Creation of the Royal Academy Operas, 1720–1728. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Assessment
Summative
This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Essay | 70% |
Outline | 30% |
Referral
This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Essay | 100% |
Repeat
An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Essay | 100% |
Repeat Information
Repeat type: Internal & External