Teaching Canonic Opera and Musical Theater with Intention: A Teacher's Guide (Modern Musicology and the College Classroom)

For many instructors today, teaching canonical dramatic repertoire can be a fraught proposition: from Don Giovanni to South Pacific, key works in the history of opera and musical theater present challenges related to gender, race, colonialism, class, and more.Teaching Canonic Opera and Musical Theater with Intention: A Teacher's Guide offers instructors a toolkit with which to productively confront the canon, directly engaging in the difficult conversations this repertoire can prompt.Informed by evidence from contemporary and historical context, librettos, and production history, instructors will be able to confidently help students consider best practices for the future. This book presents 15 case studies of exemplars from the opera and musical theater canon, which showcase a close study of the music and text in service of addressing the most provocative aspects.With nuanced explorations of each work, the authors offer a variety of pathways to draw connections between their content an