Presenter: Brian Mann
This course is the second installment of a two-part exploration of nineteenth-century Paris and focuses on the period from 1850-1900. The course hopes to convey a sense of the almost bewildering variety of activity in the “City of Light”. Subjects considered include the revolution of 1848; Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état; the “Second Empire”; the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune; the poetry of Baudelaire; the operas of Bizet and others; the novels of Flaubert, Maupassant and Zola; the birth of Impressionism; the world fairs of 1867, 1878, and 1889; and the trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus.
Brian Mann taught courses in music history and theory for many years in the Vassar College Department of Music. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh (B. Mus.) and the University of California, Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.)