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VIVE LA ! SAVORING FRENCH Kip Cranna, Dramaturg Emeritus, Summer 2021, Wednesdays, 2:30-4:00pm

French are famed for their colorful sororities, refined expression, delicate sensibilities and grand pageantry. This online course will offer a musical journey through the full range of France's great opera , including masterworks by Lully and Rameau, Classic Period operas by Gluck, French grand operas by Meyerbeer and Berlioz, standard repertoire works by Bizet, Gounod, Offenbach, and Saint-Saëns, romantic favorites by Massenet, and 20th-century works by Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Video and audio examples (with English ) will focus on listening skills, with biographical and literary background review putting each work in is historical context.

Clifford (Kip) Cranna, Dramaturg Emeritus of San Francisco Opera, served on the staff for over forty years and was Director of Administration for over thirty years. In 2008 he was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor, and in 2012 he received the Bernard Osher Cultural Award for distinguished efforts to bring excellence to a cultural institution. In 2014 he received the Star of Excellence Award for outstanding service to the programs of the San Francisco Opera Guild. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University. For thirty years he was Program Editor and Lecturer for the Carmel Bach Festival. He lectures and writes frequently on opera appreciation in the Bay Area and teaches at the OLLIs of UC Berekeley, San Francisco State, and Domonican University as well as at the Fromm Institute at USF. www.KipCranna.com [email protected]

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Schedule of Classes • Week I (June 2): French Baroque and Classic Lully, M.A. Charpentier, Rameau, Gluck • Week II (June 9): Grand Opéra Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Thomas • Week III (June 16): French Favorites Gounod, Offenbach • Week IV (June 23): More French Favorites Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Massenet, G. Charpentier • Week V (June 30): in the Twentieth Century Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Messiaen

Operas to be featured include: Class I: Jean-Baptiste Lully: (1686) Jean-Philippe Rameau: (The Amorous Indies) (1735) Christoph Willabald Gluck: Orphée et ( and Euridice) (774) Gluck: Iphigénie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris) (1779)

Class II: : Medée () (1797) : Guillaume Tell () (1829) : (Robert the Devil) (1831) Meyerbeer: (The Hugenots) (1836) : (The Trojans) (1858) : (1868)

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Class III:

Charles Gounod: (1859) Gounod: Roméo et Juliette (1867) : Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) (1858) Offenbach: La grande-duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) Offenbach: Les Contes d’Hoffmann () (1881)

Class IV: : Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) (1863) Bizet: (1875) Camille Saint-Saëns: et Dalila (1877) Massenet: (1884) : (1900)

Class V: : Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) : L’heure espangole (The Spanish ) (1911) Ravel: L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells) (1925) : Dialogues des Carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites) (1957) : Saint François d'Assise (Saint Francis of Assisi ) (1983) Kaija Saariaho: L’amour de loin (Love From Afar) (2000)

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Recommended Reading

French Opera: A Short History, by Vincent Giroud. Yale University Press, 2010. This is the best overall survey of French , with lots of historical background and a good discussion of stylistic matters.

The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteen Century, by Hervé Lacombe. University of California Press, 2001. This is a scholarly investistigation of French , with particular emphasis the creation, esthetics, and social context of Bizet’s opera Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers).

Opera in , 1800-1850, by Patrick Barbier. Amadeus Press, 1987. This is a very readable social history of opera in Paris in the first part of the 19th- Century, with entertaining chapters on such things as “ and the Opera,” “Scenery and Machinery,” “Society and Customs,” and “Cliches and Rivalries”

French , by James R. Anthony. W.W. Norton & Co., 1974. For those particularly interested in French opera in the 18th Century, this study offers valuable insights into the stage works of Lully and Rameau.

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