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Mad scene

Not to be confused with The Mad Scene.

A mad scene (French: Scène de folie; German: Wahnsinnsszene; Italian: Scena della pazzia) is an enactment of insanity in an opera, play,[1] or the like. It may be well contained in a number, appear during or recur throughout a more through-composed work, be deployed in a finale, form the underlying basis of the work, or constitute the entire work. They are often very dramatic, representing virtuoso pieces for singers. Some were written for specific singer, usually of a soprano Fach.

History

The mad scene first appeared in seventeenth-century Venetian operas, especially those of Francesco Cavalli, most notably in L'Egisto (for a male inamorata). More notable examples were composed for opere serie or semiserie, as in those of Georg Frideric Handel (e.g., Orlando, farcically in Imeneo). They were a popular convention of French and especially Italian opera in the early nineteenth century, becoming a bel canto staple. Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is the most famous example; it was likely modeled on Vincenzo Bellini's earlier example in I puritani. Gilbert and Sullivan satirized this convention via Mad Meg in Ruddigore. As composers sought more realism (verismo), they adapted the scene, better integrating it into the opera. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky often deployed these scenes as finales.

With the rise of psychology (and advances in psychiatry), modernist composers revived and transformed the mad scene in expressionist operas and similar genres (e.g., melodramas, monodramas). Richard Strauss (Salome and Elektra), Arnold Schoenberg (Erwartung), and Alban Berg (Wozzeck and Lulu) depicted madness in new and dissonant idioms in the early 1900s. Berg, Igor Stravinsky (The Rake's Progress), Benjamin Britten (Peter Grimes) wrote these scenes for male roles. The latter wrote a mad scene parody in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The modern musical theatre was also influenced by the operatic mad scene, as in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard or Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. Some ballets contain similar scenes, most notably Adolphe Adam's Giselle.[1]

Selected examples

Baroque

Francesco Cavalli

Alessandro Stradella

Jean-Baptiste Lully

  • Roland, Act 4, Scene 5, "Je suis trahi! Ciel!"

George Frideric Handel

  • Orlando, "Ah! stigie larve... Vaghe pupille"
  • Hercules, "Where shall I fly?"

Johann Adolph Hasse

Classical

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ferdinando Paer

Romantic

Gioachino Rossini

Gaetano Donizetti

Vincenzo Bellini

  • I puritani, "O rendetemi... Qui la voce sua soave... Vien, diletto, e in ciel la luna"
  • Il pirata, "Col sorriso d'innocenza... Oh, Sole! ti vela di tenebra fonda"
  • La sonnambula, "Oh! se una volta sola... Ah! non credea mirarti... Ah! non giunge uman pensiero"

Giuseppe Verdi

Richard Wagner

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Ferenc Erkel

Ambroise Thomas

  • Hamlet, "Partagez-vous mes fleurs"

Modest Mussorgsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Since 1900

Richard Strauss

Arnold Schoenberg

Max von Schillings

Alban Berg

  • Wozzeck, Act 1, Scene 2, "Du [Andres], der Platz ist verflucht!"[a]
  • Wozzeck, Act 3, Scene 4, "Das Messer! Wo ist das Messer?"[b]
  • Lulu, Act 2, Scene 1, "Du Kreatur, die mich durch den Strassenkot zum Martertode schleift!" (Dr. Schön's five-strophe aria)

Sergei Prokofiev

Benjamin Britten

Igor Stravinsky

Francis Poulenc

Hans Werner Henze

Peter Maxwell Davies

Leonard Bernstein

  • Mass, XVI. Fraction: "Things get broken"

Dominick Argento

John Corigliano

André Previn

Since 2000

Daniel Catán

Comparable examples

Francesco Sacrati

Henry Purcell

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Giuseppe Verdi

Arnold Schoenberg

Giacomo Puccini

Milton Babbitt

Luciano Berio

Olga Neuwirth

Michael Finnissy

Parodies

Jacques Offenbach

  • Le pont des soupirs, "Ah! le Doge, ah! Les plombs, le canal Orfano l'Adriatique, c'est fini je suis folle"

Gilbert and Sullivan

Benjamin Britten

Leonard Bernstein

Notes

  1. ^ "You [Andres], this place is cursed!"
  2. ^ "The knife! Where is the knife?"

See also

References

  1. ^ a b McCarren, Felicia M. (1998). Dance Pathologies: Performance, Poetics, Medicine. Stanford University Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-8047-3524-7.
  2. ^ a b Albright 2021, 150, 165.
  3. ^ Albright 2021, 150.

Bibliography

  • Albright, Daniel. 2021. Music's Monisms: Disarticulating Modernism, fwd. Alexander Rehding. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-79136-4 (ebk). ISBN 978-0-226-79122-7 (hbk). doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226791364.001.0001.
  • Anderson, James (1993) The Complete Dictionary of Opera & Operetta, New York
  • Arias, Enrique. 1999. "Reflections from a Cracked Mirror: Madness in Music and Theory of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries—An Overview". In A Compendium of American Musicology: Essays in Honor of John F. Ohl, eds. Enrique Arias, Susan M. Filler, William V. Porter, and Jeffrey Wasson, 133–154. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-1536-1 (hbk).
  • Ewen, David (1963) Encyclopedia of the Opera, New York
  • The Top 10 Mad Scenes in Opera WQXR Operavore retrieved 13-08-13
  • Любимов, Д.В. Осторожно, сумасшествие! // Оpera musicologica. 2021. Т. 13. № 4. С. 172–178. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26156/OM.2021.13.4.008.
  • Любимов, Д.В., Кром, А.Е. «Сцена безумия» в опере: проблемы дефиниции // Музыкальный журнал Европейского Севера. 2022. № 2 (30). С. 60–74. URL: http://muznord.ru/images/issue/30/30_Lubimov_Krom.pdf
  • Любимов, Д.В. Лючия и Марфа: безумные невесты в оперном театре XIX века // Opera musicologica. 2022. Т. 14, № 3. С. 30–45. DOI 10.26156/OM.2022.14.3.002.
  • Любимов, Д.В. Феномен безумия в европейской опере и его научное осмысление: к проблеме периодизации // Музыкальная академия. 2022. № 4. С. 180–195. DOI: 10.34690/278.
  • Любимов, Д.В.Лючия и Жизель: безумные героини в музыкальном театре XIX века. DOI 10.24412/2658-7858-2023-33-61-69 // Музыка в системе культуры: Научный вестник Уральской консерватории.–2023.– Вып. 33.– С. 61–69.
  • Любимов, Д.В. Сюжетный мотив безумия в театральном творчестве А.Е.Варламова // Вестник Саратовской консерватории. Вопросы искусствознания. 2023. №4 (22). С. 65-72. URL: https://sarcons.ru/image/publikacii/vestnik_sgk/%D0%92%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%20%D0%A1%D0%93%D0%9A.2023%20%E2%84%964(22).pdf
  • Любимов, Д. В. Уберто и Мельник: безумные отцы в оперном театре XIX века // Опера в музыкальном театре: история и современность. Тезисы VI Международной научной конференции, 11–15 марта 2024 г. / ред.-сост. Н.В. Пилипенко, под ред. И.П. Сусидко, Н.В. Пилипенко, А.И. Масловой / Российская академия музыки имени Гнесиных. — М.: Издательство «Российская академия музыки имени Гнесиных», 2024. - С. 120-121. URL: https://gnesin-academy.ru/upload/iblock/8c7/45titr0z13o7jvzvuuwjnvtpr2gm2xcp/AbstractsBook_Conf_Opera_2024.pdf
  • Любимов Д. В. Сцена безумия Мелинды из оперы Ф. Эркеля «Банк Бан»: преломление европейских и национальных традиций // Музыка в системе культуры: Научный вестник Уральской консерватории.–2024.– Вып. 37.– С. 6–14.
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