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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... Chapter , " Modern dying takes place in the modern hospital , where it can be hidden , cleansed of its organic blight , and finally packaged for modern burial . We can now deny the power not only of death but of nature itself . " 10 ...
... chapter epigraphs suggest , even Mozart's re- demptive comic fantasy The Magic Flute betrays an obsession with this theme . Opera's stories are concise — forcibly so — since it takes longer to sing than to speak a line of text . Its ...
... chapter explains in more detail , they can feel both identification and distance as they— safely — rehearse their own ( or a loved one's ) demise through the highly artificial , conventionalized form of opera . Michael Neill has argued ...
... chapter . In short , these operas , with their open dramatization of the issues around death and dying , challenge some of our most basic contemporary assumptions about the end of life . This book deals with these chal- lenges by ...
... chapters like the second one , where we explore the importance of German Romanticism in general and of Wagner in particular to our argument . Here lie the roots of Western cul- ture's positive understanding and evaluation of death ...
Contents
The Contemplation of Death | 15 |
Eros and Thanatos Richard Wagners Tristan und Isolde | 45 |
All That Is Ends Living while Dying in Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen | 73 |
Orphic Rituals of Bereavement | 96 |
Tis a Consummation Devoutly to Be Wishd Staging Suicide | 123 |
The Undead | 146 |
Be Acquainted with Death Betimes | 184 |
Notes | 189 |
Acknowledgments | 232 |
Index | 233 |