Instructor: Mark Tiarks
Format: Hybrid (Zoom or In-Person)
Dates: 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, (Wenesdays)
Time: 1-3 pm
Love Me Tonight
Madame Satan
There’s a lot more to love in Hollywood musicals from the '20s and ’30s than just Fred and Ginger. We’ll check them out together in hits like Top Hat and Swing Time, as well as solo in 42nd Street (Ginger) and Dancing Lady (Fred); then we’ll explore incredibly innovative Pre-Code musicals like Love Me Tonight, complete with its top-notch score by Rodgers and Hart, and a wildly weird one in Cecil B. DeMille’s Madam Satan, which starts out as a sex comedy and ends up a disaster flick aboard a doomed dirigible. We’ll also examine Ernst Lubitsch’s ultra-stylish films, such as The Merry Widow and The Love Parade, and the rise of Hollywood operetta through competing versions of Show Boat and the heyday of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.
Mark Tiarks writes on cultural issues for The Santa Fe New Mexican and has taught RENESAN classes on opera, musical theater, film, and literature. He majored in dramatic literature at Carleton College and studied theater and opera for a year as a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellow. He served as General Director of Chicago Opera Theater and Producing Director of Chicago's Court Theatre.
The above information is excerpted from the Fall 2023 RENESAN Course Catalog.