Music

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    Lear
    (2015) Oberhauser, Michael James; Wilson, Mark E.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This opera, Lear, draws its libretto directly from William Shakespeare's King Lear. Some supporting characters and subplots have been removed, and some characters have been fused to reduce the time and forces needed to produce this piece. Parent/child relationships, eyesight, and deception/disguises are important themes in this adapted libretto. The last point, deception and disguises, receives special attention in the opera. Each time a character dons a disguise a "transformation" motive is heard. Simultaneously, at least one of the woodwind players will switch to a traditional doubling instrument to add a timbral change to the visual change on the stage. Two characters in the opera never sing, but only speak: Lear and Gloucester. This separates them from the rest of the cast to highlight their paternal nature. The music for spoken sections includes liberal use of fermatas, vamps, and other forms of repetition to underscore the speech. Most characters have musical motives and/or signature styles to aid in their characterization. Goneril and Edmund are intelligent, eloquent, and manipulative. heir music can be triadic and diatonic when they need it to be, and their lines are often winding and chromatic. Regan and Oswald, on the other hand, are more characters of action than thought. Their music is more blunt and to the point. The harmony of the opera moves among diatonic, quartal, whole-tone, octatonic, hexatonic, and more complicated harmonies, depending on the character singing or speaking and what his motives are at that moment. At several points in the opera, a rhythmic pattern will continue over a bar that obscures the meter. Sometimes multiple patterns will be present at once. The harmony is at its most complicated when these patterns overlap, or when two characters' personal motives are presented simultaneously. The opera's duration is approximately two hours. The cast calls for two sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, two baritones, a bass-baritone, and two male actors. The opera is scored for Flute (doubling Piccolo and Alto Flute), Oboe (doubling English Horn), Bb Clarinet (doubling Bass Clarinet), Bassoon, Horn in F, Percussion (one player), Piano, String Quartet, and Double Bass.
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    Opera Delaware's Family Opera Theatre
    (2010) Covert, Kalle; Haggh-Huglo, Barbara; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Nearly every opera company in North America conducts some form of outreach to children with the intent to educate and develop young audiences. By examining the forty-year history of Opera Delaware's Family Opera Theatre, the biography of its most influential director, Evelyn Swensson, and four children's operas commissioned and produced by the company, I identify the educational and artistic goals that have made this company successful. These include allowing children opportunities to participate in the creation of professional opera, providing high quality preparatory materials, and performing operas based on quality children's books that are taught in the school curriculum. The critical analysis of four original children's operas compares the approaches of three different composers to this task and demonstrates key features of successful children's opera, which include brevity, relevant subject matter, repetition of themes or lyrics, and a balance between musical elements that are familiar and unfamiliar to children.
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    "Who wants real? I want magic!" Musical Madness in _A Streetcar Named Desire_
    (2004-04-30) Maiman, Nichole Marie; DeLapp, Jennifer; Music
    In both the 1947 play and 1998 opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, both Tennessee Williams and André Previn depict the mental decline of the fragile Blanche DuBois through her desperate cries for human affection, her loss of sanity deriving from the constant struggle between male society's prescriptions for female behavior, and her own internalization of these roles. The constant clash between Blanche's thought and deed her façade of the perfect Southern belle hiding nymphomaniacal tendencies along with her rape, also contributes to her to madness. In this paper I explore Blanche's character and both Williams's and Previn's use of music to illustrate her lunacy. I then conclude with a consideration of the writings of prominent literary, theater, music, and feminist writers to show how gender roles and sexual violence serve as catalysts for the female madness manifested in A Streetcar Named Desire.