Create and discuss your own scenario for an opera based on Goethe’s Faust. The scenario should be divided into acts and scenes, and each scene should be divided into musical numbers (arias, ensembles, choruses, instrumental passages). The text content of each individual number should be described. This would all be done in chart form.
Essay Instructions: Your discussion will occupy 7-8 pages and will include the following:
— The dramatic/philosophical message of the play that you wish to communicate
— a justification for what you chose to include and reasons for what you omit
— some indication of the music you would want and whether musical recall would
be used; the amount of detail is up to you
If you are tired of Faust and would like to create a scenario for a different story, try Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It’s a good choice for the holidays ahead, and it involves an old man reliving his life under the influence of supernatural figures (sound familiar?). I’ll put the text on Canvas, together with an audio recording of it. I strongly recommend the audio, which is in three installments and takes a little under three hours. (Listen to it instead of Mahler this weekend.) Your scenario would take the same form as the one for Faust that I described above.