《Lecture 19耶鲁大学开放课程《聆听音乐》讲稿》.pdf

Yale University Listening to Music Lecture 19 Professor Craig Wright: So good morning. Today were going to be talking about opera, particularly opera of the nineteenth century. This is actually the third opera that we have engaged in our course, and it occurs to me that I should ask you the names of the other two. Can you remember any of the other operas that we looked at, albeit briefly, in this class? Thaddeus. Student: Don Giovanni . Professor Craig Wright: Don Giovanni, by Mozart. That was the one we had a run at acting out particular scenes of. We enjoyed it. And what was the other one, an earlier one that we heard at least an aria out of? Is it Leah? Leah, please. Student: Dido and Aeneas. Professor Craig Wright: Dido and Aeneas of Henry Purcell, taking us back into the seventeenth century. So we had a seventeenth-century opera, an eighteenth-century opera. Now we come to a nineteenth-century opera. Nineteenth-century opera, as you may know if youve peeked there in chapters twenty-six, twenty-seven, and twenty-eight of your textbook, concerns two figures in particular: one, Richard Wagner and the other, Giuseppe Verdi. Now weve had some music of Wagner before. What was the big aria that we dealt with out of his opera Tristan? Remember that? What was that? It had an interesting name. Thaddeus again. Student: The Liebestod. Professor Craig Wright: The Liebestod--the Liebestod of Richard Wagner. But weve had some Wagner here in our course. Weve had no Verdi and I think its--it is probably wiser to focus on Verdi because Verdi in a way is much more representative of nineteenth-century opera generally than is Wagner. Wagner is a very special kind of thing that gets put on only in--usually only in Wagner festivals, whereas Verdi, in an odd way--Verdi and Mozart and Puccini--are sort of the staples of most opera companies a