Any Opera Topic, final essay

Description

Previous essay was on the role of masculinity in opera and is attached.  Prompt for this essay:  You could write about almost anything, from a single moment/number/scene, performance, production, interpretation, video game, film; to the building of an opera house; to an incident in the life of an opera singer; to opera during the COVID-19 pandemic, #operaisracist, or about an operatic debate in historical or contemporary literature. Be warned: don’t just pontificate, focus your topic on specific material. Most of all, make sure that you work towards developing a strong thesis statement. One of the most important academic skills for you to acquire is the ability to design, shape, and focus your own individual research topics. Over two months, we will develop a conversation about how to do this, and how to devise a project suitable to an informed and focused essay, where you have  can show off the level of your initiative and creativity.  The only stipulation is that your Final Essay relate, in some way, to our “Opera and Reason” theme. With my permission, you may choose to significantly expand upon the work of your Midterm Essay. One good way to proceed is to search online for and start from an opera-related documentary, an excellent article, the performance of opera in marginalized/local communities, etc. or to discuss the use of music from a specific opera in film, etc. We have spent a lot of time in this class with a basic introduction to six “greatest hits,”; so it might be time to focus on something more local. It helps to find a topic that is talked-about, so that your project is issue-driven. Another good way to proceed is to study and explore ONE talked-about historical/institutional staging, ONE opera company, ONE character from any opera, by any ONE single celebrated operatic singer in history, for whom that character is or was definitive or controversial. Choosing to write about a single singer, I’ve found, is often a good way to go! Contextualize the gossip, controversy, debates that surrounding or informed this definitive performance. Yet another good way to go is to do discourse analysis. Why did this singer-character-production-company resonate for a particular time and place? What made/makes sense, what didn’t/doesn’t, and what issues were/are at stake?