Teach plays, novels and other works that have been adapted into operas and other musical forms. From the majority of Shakespeare's plays to Goethe's "Faust" to James Joyce's "Ulysses," composers have drawn upon many literary classics to create original works. Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein turned "Romeo and Juliet" into the Broadway musical "West Side Story." In 2004, American Heavy metal combo Mastadon released "Leviathan," a rock opera inspired by Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick."
Find connections between popular music and literature. In his 1966 classic "Desolation Row," Bob Dylan sings about "Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot/ Fighting in the captain's tower." Play the song for your students and then launch into an introduction of High Modernist poetry. While lots of popular songs reference literature, you can also find some cases in which literature references popular music. A great example is Phillip Larkin's famous poem "Annus Mirabilis," which begins with the following lines:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Show your students the librettos to operas, many of which critics consider literary works in themselves. This emphasizes the fundamental connection between literary art and music. You may have to find English translations for the text of many librettos, as most classic operas features lyrics in French or Italian. You can also use librettos in a foreign language literature course as a primary text--your students can benefit from listening to Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and following along with a copy of Lorenzo Da Ponte's Italian libretto.