This course examines over a millennium of music, art, literature, and culture in Venice, using as its lens the theatricality of the city’s unique topography, environment, and geographic position. Moving between modern and medieval, the stage and the street, we consider the special relationship this implausible city has always staged between human creativity and ecological fragility. Topics include public opera, civic ritual, postwar avant-gardism, tourism, the city in fiction and film, and the Venice Biennale.
