Many commentators and vocal experts have declared the demise of opera. Professional papers by vocal pedagogues and YouTube videos abound with titles such as Where Have All the Great Singers Gone? and The Death of Opera. These professional vocal experts are not referring to modern opera stage productions and the dominance of the Regieoper since Adolphe Appia but rather to what they perceive as the death of Bel Canto and the development of a very different (and, to them, ugly) singing technique.
This course will describe the Bel Canto style of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century and discuss how that style evolved into what is currently heard in the world’s leading opera houses. Why did these changes occur? Why did singers during the 20th and 21st centuries have to develop a new style of operatic singing? Join us to consider how opera continues to survive and to better understand what opera goers hear from the stage today.
TUITION - $25.00
INSTRUCTOR - Ifan Payne (BA, Welsh School of Architecture; PhD, University of London) has written extensively on sound recording and reproduction, music, and the performing arts in the UK and the US. His record reviews have been published in The American Record Guide, The Absolute Sound, HiFi News/Record Review and the Journal of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. His reviews and music articles have appeared in the Kansas City Star, Manhattan Mercury, Western Mail, and Welsh Music. Payne has appeared on radio and television arts programs in the US and the UK and hosted weekly music programs on KSAC & KKSU.
The above information is excerpted from the Fall 2023 RENESAN Catalog.