ESU Department of Music to Present Talk, “Music Drama at its Best: Shakespeare, Verdi and Otello,” on July 8

Posted by: admin on June 24, 2014, No Comments

Some operatic masterworks possess such dramatic intensity and emotional depth that they prove immediately accessible and captivating to even those who have never been to a theater.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello, with its universally relevant themes of love, jealousy, and good versus evil, is one of opera’s most magnetic works. Based on Shakespeare’s poignant tragedy, Othello, Verdi’s opera is considered by many to be the greatest Italian opera ever created.

Opera enthusiast Eugene Galperin, Ph.D., an assistant professor of mathematics at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, will explore this timeless masterpiece in a presentation, “Music Drama at its Best: Shakespeare, Verdi, and Otello.

The presentation, open to the public at no cost, will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 8, in the Dale Snow Theatre of East Stroudsburg University’s Fine and Performing Arts Center, Normal and Marguerite streets, East Stroudsburg.

Geared toward people with little or no knowledge of opera, the presentation, the seventh of the series, “Why Opera Still is Relevant Today,” will provide an introduction to Otello, one of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live-In-HD performances designed to make outstanding opera productions accessible to audiences throughout the world.

Otello will be screened Wednesday, July 9, at 7 p.m. at Cinemark Theater in the Stroud Mall.

The ESU presentation is being sponsored by the departments of music and theatre. For more information on the talk, please call Galperin at 570-422-3931.