The Art of Opera: Yours to Explore and Enjoy!

Are you curious about opera but don't know where to begin? Or, are you an opera enthusiast looking to deepen your appreciation by exploring the genre's rich historical, cultural, and political context? This course is designed to help you achieve both objectives. Over ten weeks, you will delve into the world of opera through a series of thematic and chronological modules that cover the key periods and figures in the genre's development. You will learn how to contextualize operas within their appropriate political, historical, and cultural horizon, and develop selective skills of contextual, theoretical, and comparative analysis of operas which appear in this course. Through interactive discussions with your classmates, you will also learn how to actively watch and enjoy operas together. By the end of the course, you will have gained a deeper appreciation of opera and its enduring significance as a form of artistic expression. To pass the course, you will need to complete weekly quizzes/tests and actively participate in group discussions.

Those who would like to experience and enjoy opera but do not know where they should begin and also those who already enjoy operas but would like to deepen their knowledge by better understanding its historical, cultural and political context and how it has been developed.

No required textbook

Miho Uchida

Miho is an England-based opera journalist who has been a member of the Foreign Press Association in London since 2015. She graduated with a BA Hon.in Opera Studies from Manchester University and received her MA from University College of London (UCL) by researching gender issues and Orientalism in Opera. She has contributed articles to and produced feature spreads in both Japanese and English magazines since 2014. For all articles, she makes sure to interview opera singers, directors and instrumentalists for first hand reference. Supporting the development of opera and widening its audience by conveying her joy and knowledge is her passion. She also thoroughly enjoys traveling across the globe to visit different opera houses.