'Shakespeare's Operatic Life' with William Germano
Since the 18th century, composers have drawn on Shakespeare as a source for operatic composition. Shakespeare means something different to Anglophone audiences now than he did to foreign audiences during most of his operatic life. This talk explores the ways in which English Shakespeare became Continental Shakespeare through musical means.
About William Germano
William Germano is professor of English at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he has taught since 2006 and where he has served as dean of humanities and social sciences (2006–2017). He was previously vice president and publishing director at Routledge, where for almost 20 years he led a program that helped ground big conversations in the humanities, theory, gender and race, and cultural issues from antiquity to cyberspace, and before that editor-in-chief at Columbia University Press.
He is the author of four books. Two have become familiar sources for scholars: "Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books" ( Chicago; 3/e 2012) and "From Dissertation to Book" (Chicago; 2/e, 2016). Two are studies in film and cultural history: "The Tales of Hoffmann" (British Film Institute, 2012), on Power and Pressburger's film adaptation of Offenbach's opera, and "Eye Chart" (Bloomsbury, 2017), a cultural history of vision and its measurement. He has just completed a cowritten book on, of all things, the idea of the syllabus. Current projects: finally finishing a book on revising writing and a book on the history of Shakespeare's operatic adaptations.