ABSTRACT
Listening to music with a high emotional content can be a means of developing emotional intelligence ability. This chapter considers how music has been used to create 'moods' or paint an emotional background in films. Many operas are concerned with themes of illness and mortality, and through them composers have often set disease within social contexts and stereotypes. The classic tuberculosis (TB) operas are La Boheme by Puccini and La Traviata by Verdi, and these can usefully be utilised to study the effect of illness on the individual and those around them, and its effect on relationships and attitudes. Both heroines die on stage, and this portrayal of their death could be used in discussions about terminal care and dying. Music is one of the more difficult of the creative arts to work with in medical education. It is abstract and learners may be put off by the perceived exclusivity of classical music and media such as opera.
