Opera: The Art of DyingOur modern narratives of science and technology can only go so far in teaching us about the death that we must all finally face. Can an act of the imagination, in the form of opera, take us the rest of the way? Might opera, an art form steeped in death, teach us how to die, as this provocative work suggests? In "Opera: The Art of Dying" a physician and a literary theorist bring together scientific and humanistic perspectives on the lessons on living and dying that this extravagant and seemingly artificial art imparts. Contrasting the experience of mortality in opera to that in tragedy, the Hutcheons find a more apt analogy in the medieval custom of "contemplatio mortis"--a dramatized exercise in imagining one's own death that prepared one for the inevitable end and helped one enjoy the life that remained. From the perspective of a contemporary audience, they explore concepts of mortality embodied in both the common and the more obscure operatic repertoire: the terror of death (in Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites"); the longing for death (in Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde"); preparation for the good death (in Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung"); and suicide (in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly"). In works by Janacek, Ullmann, Berg, and Britten, among others, the Hutcheons examine how death is made to feel logical and even right morally, psychologically, and artistically--how, in the art of opera, we rehearse death in order to give life meaning. |
From inside the book
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... century is one he labels “tamed” or “tame death.”3 Here, death is seen as part of a collective fate for everyone. When people understand that they are about to die, they become the cen- ter of a ritual, which they themselves organize ...
... century , he suggests , dying is seen as the plunging of the individual into an “ irrational , violent and beautiful world , not desirable but admirable in its beauty . " The eroticiza- tion of death accompanies this return of an ...
... century works, and those indeed are the major focus of this study. In most Italian and French operas of this period, es- pecially those of the conventionally tragic variety, a preoccupa- tion with death dominates—and is associated with ...
... century operatic conven- tion of the lieto fine , or happy ending , put the emphasis on the joy- ful reunion of the lovers , even in tragedies . Villains were allowed to die ; reunited lovers were not , even when this necessitated plot ...
The Art of Dying Linda Hutcheon, Michael Hutcheon. houses in seventeenth-century Venice).19 Only at the beginning of the nineteenth century did the traditional tragic ending take over the operatic stage. It is not accidental, we argue ...
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
Richard Wagners Tristan and Isolde | 45 |
Living while Dying in Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen | 73 |
4 Orphic Rituals of Bereavement | 96 |
Staging Suicide | 123 |
6 The Undead | 146 |
Be Acquainted with Death Betimes | 184 |
Notes | 189 |
Acknowledgments | 233 |
Index | 235 |