Melismatic Madness and Technology

By the mid nineteenth-century, coloratura had become stylized to the point that it could represent hysterical cries. If we consider technology in its original sense as a “practical art” that extends the body’s abilities, then coloratura—an art that features the extended agility and range of the voice—is perhaps the most striking technology employed to mark and empower the operatic madwoman. This chapter explores mid-century mad scenes and related technologies: Giacomo Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du nord and Le Pardon de Ploërmel, as well as Ophélie’s mad scene in Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet. These operas also feature sopranos who embody a particular, aestheticized view of femininity at mid-century as stylized, objectified icons of hysteria. Exploring the aural impact of these scenes, the sopranos who originally portrayed the mad heroines, the original staging manuals, and the historical context of emerging psychiatry highlights the importance of the visual in thinking about this phenomenon.

Mad for Her Country: Melinda’s Insanity, the Puszta, and Nationalist Dramaturgy in Ferenc Erkel’s Bánk bán Act 3

Framed by Béla Bartók’s criticism of Ferenc Erkel’s nationally inappropriate style in his polemic “On Hungarian Music,” this article examines, on the one hand, the overlap between the conventions of the bel canto Italian mad scene and the structure of verbunkos in Act 3, scene 1 of Erkel’s Bánk bán, and, on the other, the dramaturgical and national significance of Erkel’s particular mixture of such international and Hungarian traditions. In particular, I consider the seeming incongruence between the typically celebratory mood of the csárdás and its function as the cabaletta of Melinda’s mad scene as an expression of Hungarian national preoccupation with victimhood (propagated by such foundational national texts as Mihály Vörösmarty’s 1836 Szózat, which has served as Hungary’s “second national anthem”). Melinda’s mad scene takes place on the banks of the Tisza River on the Great Hungarian Plain, a location of central importance to Hungarian national identity. This environment, which Erkel and his librettist invented for the mad scene, reinforces Melinda’s tragic role as a symbol of the nation. With eye and ear attuned to Hungarian traditions on several different levels, a close reading of this scene demonstrates that even when Erkel works within well-worn traditions of the international opera stage, he does so in a manner specifically suited to the spirit of nineteenth-century Hungarian nationalism.

The origins of Lucia di Lammermoor's cadenza

This article addresses the long-controversial dating of the cadenza with flute in the mad scene of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. New manuscript sources indicate that the famous cadenza dates not from the first half of the nineteenth century, as musicologists had assumed, but from 1889, when it was added to the opera for Nelly Melba’s performances at the Palais Garnier, Paris. The cadenza was most likely composed by Melba’s teacher Mathilde Marchesi to showcase the light voice and virtuosic technique of her student. Once introduced, the cadenza with flute decisively altered the impact and reception of the mad scene. In the first two decades after the opera’s 1835 première, the mad scene had not been particularly popular, perhaps because it contravened contemporary Italian taste for mad scenes featuring docile, virginal heroines. By the fin de siècle, however, the mad scene was regarded as the highlight of the opera, the excesses of the cadenza resonating with the new vogue for violent and hysterical heroines on the operatic stage.

A madwoman's choice: aria substitution in Lucia di Lammermoor

Shortly following the premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1835, performances of this opera often featured a strange substitution: sopranos performed the rondò-finale from one of Donizetti's earlier operas, Fausta, in place of the now-famous mad scene aria. At least four productions were affected and this alteration was performed by some of the most famous sopranos of the time. This article explores the brief tradition of altering the mad scene by looking carefully at its origin and subsequent appearances, discussing its effects on the experience of hearing Lucia di Lammermoor as a whole, and investigating the possible reasons why this substitution lasted only for a brief period of time.

1935

Wednesday 2 January On New Year's Eve I saw Gielgud's ‘Hamlet’ at the New Theatre. (Lilian, Ida and Rosemary, in all the glory of her first long evening dress, and I taxied down to Kettners for dinner, on to the theatre – R's first Hamlet – and taxied home through streets pleasantly riotous with New Year's Eve revellers.) Gielgud, I thought, was better than when I saw his first Hamlet some four years ago, but is not wholly satisfactory. The cuts were few – a good deal of the political explanation went from Scene 1 but Fortinbras was retained and given his proper value in the last scene: there was an odd inexplicable cut in the play scene, Hamlet's renaissance mouthing of his quatrain being omitted – and the play was taken straight through with but one short interval. The Ophelia of Jessica Tandy was disappointing. She conveyed excellently the toppled brain in the mad scene, but with her slight physique and thin voice she did not convince one that Hamlet had ever had any amorous feeling for her, and there was no contrast between Ophelia sane and Ophelia mad. She used no flowers – this was no innovation, but in view of the description of her death it still seems to me that Shakespeare meant actual flowers to be borne. Hamlet followed the tradition of no portraits in the closet scene. The real weakness of Gielgud was that he never conveyed the bantering side of Hamlet's character – in the recorder speech he worked himself into a great and ranting rage, but to my mind Hamlet is quiet throughout, and his sudden turn on the two who would pluck the heart from his mystery was surely quiet – banteringly – whimsically – contemptuously. Frank Vosper as Claudius was excellent. […] The setting was a series of Tudor pictures which were so good that they distracted the mind too much. One felt that Ophelia had been cast for her part as a decoration. The lack of noticeable breaks in the action for changes of scene was achieved by the use of round elevated towers with steps – giving the stage a Craigian look. ‘Something too much of this!’ I thought several times – an apron stage would have been better. The Gielgud method robbed the quieter scenes of intimacy. But it was a good Hamlet, despite my quirks.

The silencing of Lucia

In Act III of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the chaplain Raimondo appears at the wedding celebrations to tell the assembled guests that Lucia has murdered her husband Arturo. While the chorus expresses shock, Lucia enters, dishevelled and deranged; the crowd turns towards her, murmuring ‘Par dalla tomba uscita!’ This image of a figure emerging from the grave, certainly apt by nineteenth-century poetic standards, also suggests itself as a contemporary metaphor: a shift in critical reception. Traditionally, a noisy chorus of operatic critics has regarded Lucia with a mixture of fascination and horror, emphasising the sepulchral aspects of her madness. Recently, however, a rather surprising resurrection has been effected through the notion, popular among some feminist critics, that Lucia's mental decline could be interpreted as positive, even liberatory. This view has been expressed most flamboyantly by Catherine Clément, for whom madness is one of the few ways an operatic heroine can escape the near-inevitable plot process of seduction and death. Her effusions on Lucia's mad scene illustrate this position vividly: ‘Lucia dances with her desires: listen how joyful, airy and peaceful it is. Who says anything about unhappiness? Madwomen's voices sing the most perfect happiness’