PROBLEM OPERAS SOLVED is the title of our course, and for the most part I will be addressing issues intrinsic to the works themselves. But one topic has cropped up again and again in my research: the problem of adapting certain well-known operas to the sensibilities of a Woke generation. So I thought it would be worthwhile to tackle the issue up front, in today’s class and to a certain extent in the next. So, after a brief preview of the course as a whole, we shall look at the problem of casting characters of color in opera and, equally importantly, giving performers of color the opportunities they deserve. In the second hour, we turn to Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, whose vision of a mythical China delights audiences but may also perpetuate ethnic and gender stereotypes. Because of its topic, this is the only class in the course to feature multiple clips rather than a single opera.

In this and each of the classes that follow, I will include a link to the featured opera under Synopsis above, generally as a link to the Metropolitan Opera website; you may care to read it in advance. Given the topic of today's class, you might also like to read this 2016 article by Joshua Barone in the New York Times: Opera Can No Longer Ignore Its Race Problem. Other links and video excerpts will be posted immediately after class. rb.