MUS 206 Music Theater:Story and Song

This course examines the varied stories, and their musical dramatic portrayals, in selected examples from music theater, from Monteverdi’s Orfeo to the more recent musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and beyond. The complex problem that acts as a backdrop for this course is to investigate how the elements of musical theater express a particular dramatic circumstance, with respect to either individual songs/arias, and more generally to the dramatic narrative of an entire work. We will examine elements specifically related to music theater as singing styles, musical idioms, the use of movement, and acting techniques. Classes will participate in one field trip to either a concert or live musical. An Artistic World course in the Goshen Core.