Great Courses:  How To Listen To And Understand Great Opera:  Part 2, taught by Professor Robert Greenberg

I think I have listened to exactly one opera in my life, when one came to the University of South Florida one Saturday night when I was a graduate student and I went to it because the price was low and enjoyed it.  I also tried to go once to The Girl With The Golden Gun but I couldn’t fit it into my schedule.  That is the extent of my own personal familiarity with opera, except for occasions where friends of mine have sent me what they consider to be fantastic renditions of “Queen Of The Night” or something of that nature.  I consider myself therefore on the fringe of the sort of audience that the professor, noted music professor Robert Greenberg, is trying to reach.  I am familiar with opera, have a mild interest in it as long as the quality is good enough, and am not implacably hostile to it as an art that is worth being enjoyed as part of one’s cultural offerings.  And that is really all that is necessary to appreciate a course like this one, at least a mild interest in opera and its history and a willingness to listen to and better understand good opera.

This particular set of lectures is the second of a set of four, and it spends its time looking at the context of two of Mozart’s classic works, Idomeneo and The Marriage Of Figaro, over the course of eight lectures that are 45 minutes apiece, the first four being devoted to the former and the second four to the latter.  In looking at opera seria the professor examines not only Mozart’s work but also the way that it was involved in the periodic reforms of opera seria that sought to renew the work from being viewed as overly melodramatic and repetitive.  Indeed, the professor has high praise for Gluck and his reforms and also notes the classical nature of Mozart’s work on Idomeneo, setting it in the context of the aftermath of the Trojan War as well as the issue of the voice parts that operas tend to involve.  The professor gets the chance to do a great deal more analysis of the arias and recitatives in the Marriage of Figaro as he examines the popularity of opera buffa in Europe in the 18th century as an instrument of social change, and looks at the revolutionary nature of Mozart’s music in painting Figaro as the equal of the slimy Count Almaviva.

Ultimately, it is pretty easy to see what the goal of the professor is of this course.  With only 32 lectures of 45 minutes each, there is no way that this course can provide a full and complete look at the worthwhile operatic repertoire.  Those listeners who are already familiar with opera can note probably a great many worthy operas that one can go and see on a regular basis in a city like Portland or Tampa (not even New York or LA or Chicago or London) that the professor simply does not have time to discuss in this sort of course.  Again, this whole quarter of the class focuses on two operas by Mozart, and we are already at the halfway point.  That said, even if the selection of discussions is limited, and the professor himself states that the only way one is going to fully appreciate these works is to take the time to listen to them with the translated wordscore, it appears as if Professor Greenberg is deeply interested in increasing the level of understanding and interest in opera, even to the point of providing a sample of the great operas that people who are already fans of classical music and “high” culture are most likely to appreciate.  That is, I think, a very wise strategy.