Lecture 19. Romantic Opera: Verdi's La Traviata, Bocelli, Pavarotti and Domingo

Listening to Music (MUSI 112)
This lecture focuses on opera and the operatic voice, from the Romantic period to the present. Professor Wright integrates a discussion of one of the most often-performed and famous operas in the Western canon, Verdi's La Traviata, with a discussion of vocal performance practice. For the latter, he uses recordings of singers from the early to late twentieth century as examples of different types of voices and the ways in which aesthetic values about the voice have changed throughout the past hundred years.
00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction to Opera
05:08 - Chapter 2. Verdi's La Traviata: The First Aria
19:36 - Chapter 3. The Scena in Opera
26:59 - Chapter 4. Critical Assessment of Vocal Performance
33:06 - Chapter 5. Major Opera Singers of the 20th and 21st Centuries
Complete course materials are available at the Yale Online website: online.yale.edu
This course was recorded in Fall 2008.