Baroque and Opera

I found yesterday's class fascinating. Once again we explored more about music and theater in the Baroque period. I have been fortunate enough to learn about theater trends in the past century during Dr. Luter's "Development of Musical Theater" course on campus as well as about the earliest theater productions in ancient Greece (the performance space, types of productions etc)in Marguerite Bennett's "Ancient Greek Theater" course. The way theater evolved all those years in between was something I had little knowledge of. I was able to appreciate the way the structure of the theaters were evolving and how for the first time, all the technical inner workings was hidden to the audience, how things were controlled, painted, manipulated to look real or to give a certain illusion to the audience. It was also interesting to learn that the theater trends were representative of the societal situations of the time. Because of the new "fruits" we had stumbled upon in the discovery of America, we had an abundance of wealth which was reflected in the saturation of color and use of extravagant technology and spectacle. So, technology became more important that the story lines of the theater pieces. The evolution of music was also interesting...how music was sacred until the influence of Mozart and how he was the master of polyphony. Anyways...anxious to see what we'll be talking about tomorrow!