Historian, lecturer, and Professor of Musicology at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Richard Giarusso leads the Spring 2016 Lecture Series exploring the world of music and musicians.

This series will consider three films (Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck, Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, and Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom) and the ways in which these directors have found uniquely effective methods of incorporating music and musical structures into their work. From the operatic style of Moonstruck (with its echoes of 18th-century opera buffa), to Visconti’s use of Mahler’s Adagietto to capture the atmosphere of his adaptation of Mann’s novella, to Anderson’s brilliant depiction of the unlikely maturity of adolescence through the music of Benjamin Britten, these lectures will invite us to consider not just the role of music in film as “soundtrack” but as an element of the director’s craft that is fundamental to our experience in the cinema.

Lectures are in the auditorium of Mason Hall, facing Wyman Park Drive, on the Hopkins Homewood campus. Parking is available in the South Garage, which is entered from Wyman Park Drive opposite the Wyman Park Building. The south-end elevator inside the glass-enclosed Parking Office brings passengers to the Mason Hall lobby.

FREE – open seating – reservations required: call 410.516.7164