3396 - Shakespeare in Music Pt 1 (Judith Costello)
Course Description
Instructor: Judith Costello
In the 460+ years since William Shakespeare’s birth, hundreds if not thousands of composers in every imaginable musical genre have been inspired by his words, his characters, his plots, and his deep understanding of the human experience. In this first of two suggested seven-week OLLI courses (Part Two is proposed for October and November 2025), we’ll explore a wide variety of music with a Shakespearean component: operas, chamber music, symphonic and choral works, ballets, incidental music to the plays, film scores, song settings, jazz interpretations, and Broadway musicals. Planned class topics in this first course series include:
Week 1 — William Shakespeare’s Life, Times, Influences, and Legacies: A brief overview of Shakespeare (the man and his times), four and a half centuries of Shakespearean scholarship, and his enduring impact on language, literature, theatre and film, art, gardening — and, of course, on music.
Weeks 2-3 — Uneasy Heads, Merry Wives, and a Disreputable Knight: We’ll hear music depicting some of Shakespeare’s medieval English kings. We’ll also spend time with one of Shakespeare’s greatest comic creations, Sir John Falstaff (a character who appears in 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, and is eulogized in Henry V), whose lecherous exploits have been celebrated in grand operas, comic operas, a symphonic study, and soundtracks to several film adaptations of the plays.
Week 4 — Two Doomed Heroes and Their Tragic Flaws: Many of Shakespeare’s title protagonists were fatally damaged by their own all-consuming character flaws (think Julius Caesar’s arrogance, Othello’s jealousy, and King Lear’s needy pride). In this class we’ll look at two of the best-known examples — Hamlet (paralyzing indecision), and Macbeth (“vaulting ambition”) — and hear music portraying them.
Week 5 — Shakespeare’s Romantic Comedies: Shakespeare wrote engagingly of young lovers whose unions were often thwarted by misdirected messages, mistaken identity, interfering servants, and disapproving parents. We’ll hear music written for Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Comedy of Errors, and Twelfth Night.
Weeks 6-7 — Star-Crossed: An extensive exploration of music inspired by Romeo and Juliet, paying particular attention to comparisons of similar scenes from the Gounod opera, the Prokofiev ballet, Bernstein’s West Side Story, and Nino Rota’s soundtrack to the 1968 Zeffirelli film.
Bio: Judith Mann Costello is a native of Oak Park, Illinois, where she divided her first 20 years between the family bookstore founded by her grandfather and the Frank Lloyd Wright home where she was raised. She has lived in NYC, Florida, and Michigan, and, since 1984, in the Atlanta area. Educated at Northwestern University and Hunter College, she holds a degree in Music Journalism from the University of South Florida. Following a long career as a classical music host for NPR stations WUSF and WFBE, Judith spent 25 years as academic and political officer for the Canadian Consulate General in Atlanta, retiring in 2013.