Online Course in Musical Dramaturgy

From 1 April to 30 May 2026, a series of online lessons was delivered by Prof. Ezio Francesco Maria Spinoccia. The programme, organised through twice-weekly meetings, was designed to complete the students’ literary, poetic and dramaturgical training and consisted of a 30-hour course in Musical Dramaturgy together with two complementary courses entitled Analysis of Poetic Forms I and Analysis of Poetic Forms II. The Musical Dramaturgy course provided a comprehensive introduction to Verdian dramaturgy and to the structures of nineteenth-century Italian melodrama, focusing in particular on Il trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi. Through the study of the relationship between Antonio García Gutiérrez’s play and the libretto by Salvatore Cammarano, the student developed critical tools for the analysis of operatic dramaturgy, narrative structures, character construction and the interaction between literary and musical language. The course also introduced key theoretical contributions on musical dramaturgy and opera studies through a specialised bibliography dedicated to Verdi’s work and to the dramaturgical structures of melodrama.

The courses Analysis of Poetic Forms I and Analysis of Poetic Forms II addressed the relationship between poetry and music from metrical, semantic and rhetorical perspectives. The first module focused on the foundations of Italian metrics, including syllable counting, versification, metrical feet, poetic rhythm, rhyme structures and the principal verse forms of the Italian tradition. The second module developed advanced competences in the analysis of poetic and operatic texts through the study of historical poetic forms such as the sonnet, ballata, lauda, madrigal, frottola, canzone, strambotto and aria col da capo. Particular attention was devoted to the relationship between poetic structure and musical realization, enabling the student to acquire analytical tools applicable to both scholarly and performative contexts.