Free Theater, Opera, & Classical Music Courses

Probably the best free course online for learning how to gain appreciation classical music is this free course from Yale entitled simply "Listening to Music".

A study of the ways music creatively expresses self-understanding, cultural environment, and aesthetic values from ancient to modern times.

This course introduces students to strategies for style writing of common practice European art music. The issues of harmonic progression, voice leading, and texture are addressed in addition to relevant compositional concepts like repetition, variation, and elaboration.

Theatre 101 aims to answer several questions, the most important of which is, "what is the nature of the theatre experience?"

An introduction to the development of music, with an emphasis on art music of the Western hemisphere. Topics include elements of music, instruments and ensembles, form, styles and periods, including major composers and work.

Appreciation of the performing arts of television, film, and the live theatre through the viewing of films and videotapes, as well as attendance at plays and musicals.

The course will explore the tone combinations that humans consider consonant or dissonant, the scales we use, and the emotions music elicits, all of which provide a rich set of data for exploring music and auditory aesthetics in a biological framework.

In 50 videos, Mike Rugnetta teaches you theater and drama! This course is based on an introductory college level course in Theater and explores the history, theory, and technology that contributes to the art form most like life.

This course examines works of film in relation to thematic issues of philosophical importance that also occur in other arts, particularly literature and opera.

This course is about how music works. It is about the relationship between the technical and aesthetic details of music. It is also about how developing a meaningful theoretical vocabulary can help you think and talk about musical style, and how learning that vocabulary can expand your appreciation for music.