The course will discuss some of the last century's representative operas, from Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande of 1902 to Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin of 2000, and also some of the lesser known but equally masterful exponents of the genre, such as Szymanowski's King Roger of 1926, Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero of 1941, and Olivier Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise of 1983. Balancing historical and theoretical approaches, the course will aim at elucidating the ambivalent role of one of Western music's defining genres during a tradition-defying period.