Learning on ScreenThe Age of Tyrants: Sappho Via Gounod’s Opera
- Synopsis
- The heroine of Charles Gounod’s French opera Sapho (1851) sings her last aria O My Immortal Lyre on a Greek cliff before plunging to her death. Sappho, the most famous poet of the ‘Lyric Age’ of Greece, in the 7th to 6th centuries BC, addressed passionate love poems to women. This lecture uncovers what we know about the ‘real Sappho’, an aristocrat who lived between 630 and 570 BCE on the island of Lesbos and socialised in the lavish courts of upstart tyrants. This historical context in no way diminishes her songs’ astonishing immediacy and erotic power. [54 minutes]
Extra Lecture materials:
PDF Transcript
PDF Presentation - Series
- Ancient Greece in Film, Opera and the Arts
- Language
- English
- Country
- Great Britain
- Year of production
- 2017
- Subjects
- Film studies; Literature
- Keywords
- poetry; Sappho; ancient Greece
Online availability
- URI
- https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/homers-iliad-via-the-movie-troy-2004
- Price
- Free
- Delivery
- Streamed/Download
Credits
- Contributor
- Edith Hall
Distributor
- Name
Gresham College
- enquiries@gresham.ac.uk
- Web
- http://www.gresham.ac.uk/ External site opens in new window
- Phone
- 020 7831 0575
- Fax
- 020 7831 5208
- Address
- Barnard’s Inn Hall
Holborn
London EC1N 2HH
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