Mad Scene Research Articles

Haunting the Law: Aspects of Gothic in Dickens's Fiction

In recent years Dickens's use of Gothic has been the focus of some diverse and absorbing critical interpretations. This paper seeks to address in more detail the ways in which Gothic features in Dickens's various responses to the law in his work. Scenes of madness, hauntings and murder all feature as ways of punishing transgressive individuals in the form of melodramatic substitutes to state law in Oliver Twist and Barnaby Rudge, and the Gothic affects justice in later novels such as Little Dorrit. As Bleak House illustrates, the Gothic also enhances the horror of the law. Dickens employs the genre in different ways within specific texts, such as The Pickwick Papers. How the diverse uses of Gothic pertain to the law in Dickens's fiction are considered in this paper.

The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (review)

OPERA The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815-1930. By Susan Rutherford. (Cambridge Studies in Opera.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [xii, 381 p. ISBN-10 0-521-85167-X; ISBN-13 978-0-5218-5167-1. $99.] Index, bibliography. As Susan Rutherford points out early in her book, this is not a study of the great individual prima donnas or a book of anecdotes. It is also not a coffee table book for the average opera lover. Instead, it is a history of the working prima donna with an emphasis on little known singers who were the backbone of operatic life during this period. Putting these singers in their social, historical and political framework rather than just their artistic milieu gives a new and interesting perspective on this relatively unexplored aspect of operatic life during the 115 years that Rutherford has studied. By centering her study on several relatively unknown singers whose lives and careers can be adequately documented, we are given a more complete portrait of what it meant to be a prima donna in the second tier of singers rather than the prima donna assoluta who ruled the opera world. Letters and diaries not only of the singers but of various members of society help to fill out the portrait. Newspaper reviews and articles including society page items further the range of information which Rutherford uses to argue her point of view. There is a basic feminist premise throughout this book that implies that for all of the power these prima donnas held, they were still dominated by the men in charge of most institutions during this period. This point of view is basic to our understanding of the material presented by Rutherford and the form of her conclusions. She points to the mad scenes and deaths of the leading ladies in the serious operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Mayr, Paer, and others as an example of defining women as frail and helpless. However a look at lesser known operas, such as Donizetti's Torquato Tasso or even Verdi's Nabucco, provides examples of mad scenes for leading male characters, and male characters certainly die as often as women in the serious operas of this period. Many of the perceived abuses of opera management that were perpetrated on women were also evident in the treatment of male singers, a point that Rutherford does not acknowledge. Rather than a gender problem, it is a reflection of the attitude that theatrical performers were, for the most part, second-class citizens and often of questionable moral character. Rutherford does fill out the picture of the prima donna by giving valuable portraits of the people surrounding them, including teachers, composers, companions, agents, and society figures who could make or break the careers of any artist. Rutherford traces the change in the place of the prima donna in operatic life as musical styles and public expectations changed from 1815 to 1930. As the century progressed and the right of the singer to insert a favored aria into any opera disappeared and the composer's score became law, the responsibilities of the performer changed from an emphasis on the voice and vocal display to the expectation that acting and stage demeanor were an integral part of any performance. Rutherford views this as a loss of power for the prima donna, which is offset during the period by women beginning in general to achieve more power in the business and political arenas. Along with the increased emphasis on stage presence and the negotiation of more complex stage settings, there was an ever expanding need for more vocal power, not just in the Wagnerian music dramas and the operas of Richard Strauss, but also in operas by French composers Reyer and Chausson, and even in the Italian school of the late Verdi, Ponchielli, Mascagni, and certainly in the Puccini of La fanciulla del West and Turandot. …

Echoed Above

In the film I Married an Angel (1942), Count Palaffi (Nelson Eddy) dreams he marries a perfect wife: an angel named Brigitta (Jeanette MacDonald). One of her angelic powers is her ability to sing operatically. Typical of cinema’s evocation of the operatic voice, the angel sings the cadenza from Lucia di Lammermoor’s Mad Scene. The famous flute sequence, echoing the vocal acrobatics, is played by a harp, providing angelic overtones. Brigitta sings the virtuoso, textless stretch of operatic singing without interference from plot, drama, character, or scenery. When the conductor praises her operatic virtuosity, “You sing like an angel,” Brigitta, to our amusement, replies: “but I am an angel!” In the cinematic imagination, when an angel descends to earth, celestial singing is transformed into an image of operatic excess. In a rather different theoretical context, the image of perfect operatic singing becomes associated with the ascent of the human voice toward the angelic. The fulfillment of this journey is an impossibility: the operatic voice’s striving toward the angelic is that which ultimately drives it to its disintegration.1 In his discussion of a medieval treatise, The Celestial Hierarchy,2 Michel Poizat writes: In this treatise . . . [Pseudo-Dionysius] spells out both the role of the angel as messenger and the silence that accompanies it. At the summit of the celestial hierarchy, he explains, the seraphim dance around God while endlessly singing hymns in his praise. But these hymns are so marvelous, so utterly beyond human language, that they are imperceptible even in the ranks of the celestial hierarchy directly below. . . . It is the seraphim’s task to transmit these divine and silent hymns down through the celestial ranks, one sphere at a time, until the musicians of the terrestrial church, discerning the faint echo of the heavenly songs, convey them, in the form of a now audible music, to human ears. It is in this sense . . . that one can speak of “the angel’s silent song.”3 In this treatise . . . [Pseudo-Dionysius] spells out both the role of the angel as messenger and the silence that accompanies it. At the summit of the celestial hierarchy, he explains, the seraphim dance around God while endlessly singing hymns in his praise. But these hymns are so marvelous, so utterly beyond human language, that they are imperceptible even in the ranks of the celestial hierarchy directly below. . . . It is the seraphim’s task to transmit these divine and silent hymns down through the celestial ranks, one sphere at a time, until the musicians of the terrestrial church, discerning the faint echo of the heavenly songs, convey them, in the form of a now audible music, to human ears. It is in this sense . . . that one can speak of “the angel’s silent song.”3

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.

Jakob Lenz ou la folie à l’opéra

Scenes of madness were common in XIXth century operas. Most of the time they were involving love hindered women, who become mad victims of family or social conflicts. A contemporary opera, “Jakob Lenz” has a different approach of the problem as it is based upon a real case of schizophrenia. The German poet, Jakob Lenz (1751-1792), who had been a prominent figure of the so called Sturm und Drang movement and a close friend of Goethe, happened to be slowly engulfed by insanity. The opera, whose composer is Wolfgang Rihm, depicts Lenz’s attempt to overcome his madness in a small village of the Vosges mountains, helped bya then famous protestant minister, Jean-Frederic Oberlin. The cure proved to be a failure and the remaining years of his life were spent in aimless drifting and poverty. Rihm’s opera is based upon a short story written by Georg Büchner, a romantic writer, of early XIXth century.

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.

Mad scenes in early 19th-century opera.

It is our objective to examine the phenomenon of mad scenes in bel canto opera from a modern perspective. The development of psychiatry and music at the beginning of the 19th century is described. Common elements of romantic music and mental disorders are discussed. It is shown how bel canto composers represent psychiatric illness by musical means. The psychopathology depicted in a prototypical mad scene is evaluated. Early romantic music is characterized by imagination, illusion and loss of structure; characteristics which can be well expressed in mad scenes. While madness (withdrawal into a utopian world) gained a certain attraction in society, clinical psychiatry increasingly focused on emotional causes of illness and on drug-induction of mental disorders. Mad scenes in bel canto opera can be understood as expression of an increasing interest in emotional aspects in music and society as well as in clinical psychiatry.

Mad scenes in 19th century opera

Many complex relationships can be found between themes in Psychiatry and the rich repertoire of lyric opera. In this paper the author has chosen to study ‘mad scenes’ in 19th century opera in which...

Getting Lucky with The Wars

I am teenager in Toronto suburb. It is the winter of 1978-79. As far as I can tell, no one around here fights for ideals or dies for passion or even has sex for the hell of it. I'm 18, late to books compared to many, but suddenly, wholly besotted. Nothing in my happy split-frame house, my street-hockeyed, garbage-binned block, my Toronto Star and TV Guide neighbourhood, can possibly compare with the Joads along the road to California or the magical goings on in Macondo. Colonel Benido is tied to tree for century! Sarah Joad offers her teat to dying old man! (Too much, that one. My English teacher passes over the image in silence.) Sweat-palmed and astonished, I lay siege to the paperback shelves Fiction and Canadiana carefully distinguished - at the nearby Coles. More Marquez and Steinbeck, Graham Greene and Gunter Grass, Hemingway (of course) and Muriel Spark (go figure): I read and read, in part for the stories, in part for the characters, in part simply for the hardness, the don't-look-away, the thisis-how-things-really-are. Canadiana, where picture books on geese mingle freely with Pierre Burton hardcovers, is pillaged with less avidity. An early group purchase, half-dozen dreary paperbacks from the New Canadian Library, ended unhappily. I've much good to say now about Morley Callaghan and Ethel Wilson (there's still no defending Ernest Buckler), but that winter, they just weren't doing it. Who has Seen the Wind, studied at school, has left positive but vague impression - a tremendous amount of wheat, as Woody Allen joked about Russian epics in Love and Death - and Fifth Business, while obviously of quality, feels too posh and decanted, too Brit. Then I notice paperback cover. A crimson poppy. Soldiers stepping through barbed wire. A blunt title - The Wars - bluntly boldfaced. (It takes half reading to notice the plural. It takes second reading to begin to fathom the complexity of that s.) Another poppy on the back, set in pure black, some blurbs and copy, and an author name in modest caps. A man named Findley. From Toronto. A former actor. Writes lot for TV. I buy The Wars for $2.50. In my basement bedroom, Jean Beliveau skating towards me from an old poster, CFRB drifting down from the kitchen radio overhead, I step into mad scene with horses and dog and young man called Robert Ross. A man about my age, but an officer in the Canadian army in France. A man (boy?) who lived with his parents until enlisting. A man/boy from mid-town Toronto, albeit more than half century before. Not so far from my bunker bedroom, I decide. Not so far from my suburb. I don't read The Wars in one sitting. I also don't ever quite leave the story - or is it the feeling of story that we carry around? - even when the book is out of my hands. By the time Findley provides the gravestone inscription: EARTH AND AIR AND FIRE AND WATER ROBERT R. …

1935

Wednesday 2 JanuaryOn 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.

Dejanira and the Physicians: Aspects of Hysteria in Handel's Hercules

The mad scene for Dejanira in act 3, scene 3 of Hercules constitutes one of the most dramatically riveting moments in all of Handel's works. Having learned that she has unwittingly brought her husband Hercules to his death, Dejanira goes mad in an electrifying scene that thwarts the listener's expectations of normative baroque musical procedures at every turn. My aim is to elucidate this scene within the specific context of Handel's Hercules, as well as within one area of the larger sociocultural realm of early eighteenth-century England: namely, widespread beliefs about the nature of hysteria in women. Indeed, Dejanira's madness cannot be understood solely in relation to the classical sources for the libretto of Hercules; those sources must also be placed within the context of eighteenth-century medical beliefs about the nature of melancholy and mania. The libretto for Hercules, written by Thomas Broughton, acknowledges in its preface a debt to two primary sources: the Trachinae (The Women of Trachis) by Sophocles and book 9 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 1 Recently Anthony Hicks has suggested a third source for Broughton, Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus.2 All these works tell the story of the demise of Hercules by the hand of his wife Dejanira, who unwittingly gives her husband a poisonous robe from the centaur Nessus in an attempt to revive his expiring love for her, but the differences between the sources are profound. These differences relate to the character Dejanira, who is given a strikingly distinct personality in each case. Broughton's depiction, though it conflates characteristics from each source, differs again from all three. Sophocles presents the most complacent Dejanira. In The Women of Trachis Dejanira is slow to believe the rumor that Hercules sacked the city Oechalia to win Iole until it is confirmed by the messenger Lichas. Her response is remarkably level-headed: I would be altogether mad to blame my husband, because he suffers from this sickness, or that woman. She has been guilty of nothing shameful, and

Scenes of Madness: A Psychiatrist at the Theatre

Scenes of Madness: A Psychiatrist at the Theatre

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Scenes of Madness: A Psychiatrist at the Theatre. By D. R. Davis.Counselling and Communication in Health Care. Edited by H. Davis and L. Fallowfield.The Adolescent Self: Strategies for Self‐Management, Self‐Soothing, and Self‐Esteem in Adolescents. By D. Wexler.Subliminal Treatment Procedures: A Clinician's Guide. By P. Swingle.Conflict and Compromise: Therapeutic Implications. Edited by S. Dowling.Self‐Disclosure: A Contemporary Analysis. By P. Burnard & P. Morrison.The Psychology of Interrogations, Confessions and Testimony. By G. Gudjonsson.

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’

Legislative Logjams: a Comparative State Analysis

Beyond these basic generalizations, we know precious little about how state legislatures handle their workloads. How is the workload divided among committees? At what stage of committee consideration do bills die? Why do some bills pass and others fail? When during the session are the various kinds of legislative business transacted? What linkages exist between legislative practice and legislative performance? No practice of state legislatures' workload management has been more thoroughly condemned than the end-of-session logjam of business. In the closing weeks of the session, state legislators are buried in an avalanche of work. In many states it becomes impossible to find bills, let along secure action on them (Wahlke 1966: 147). Legislative chambers become scenes of madness and mayhem (Berkley and Fox 1978: 84). In the midst of such confusion, legislators vote wildly and blindly on countless measures they don't know a thing about (Chamberlain 1969: 206; Lorch 1983: 164). The leadership is able to push bills or amendments through hastily without giving the members a chance to deliberate on them (Harrigan 1980: 110). The most important legislation receives the least careful consideration (Burns 1971: 56). The result is legislation of inferior quality (Luce 1974: 155). There seems to be widespread agreement among legislators, legislative scholars, and legislative reformers that the end-of-session logjam is endemic and pernicious. For some, the end-of-session logjam seems inevitable. For others, the logjam is a function of legislative workloads or procedures. For yet others, the logjam is a strategy of legislative leaders to enhance their own power. Many observers have identified presumed causes of logjam; some have suggested ways to reduce the size of logjams. The literature on state legislative logjams is more speculative than empirical. There are many statements which describe logjams in state legislatures. However, such generalizations have not been confirmed by data analysis. Numerous hypotheses concerning factors which affect the comparative size of logjams in state legislatures have been advanced. Yet,

The Recitative Soliloquy

T HE ARIA HAS RECEIVED the lion's share of attention in recent studies of the music of baroque opera.' Nevertheless, the aria did not become the exclusive medium for solo expression before the last decades of the seventeenth century. Mid-century audiences in Italy would expect protagonists to have an emotional solo scene, written in lines of seven and eleven syllables and largely set in recitative, syllabic, in common time, accompanied only by the continuo ensemble. Nino Pirrotta has already drawn attention to such recitative monologues for serious characters, and to the mad scene, which is also a recitative, though relieved by short insertions of caricatural song.2 Emotion-charged, extended soliloquies in recitative, like the famous lament of Arianna by Monteverdi (i6o8), were published in collections of monodies up till 1630. They occurred regularly in operas until about I65o, thereafter more rarely until the total triumph of the aria around I670. The use of recitative soliloquies in operas was closely tied to literary sources of dramaturgic conventions emulated by librettists. Although much more research comparing opera librettos with Italian plays needs to be undertaken, a change in literary models for librettos seems evident around 1630. Librettos before about 1630 borrow classical scene types such as narrative and soliloquizing monologues, messenger scenes, and choral-solo dialogues from neo-classical, serious plays. Narrative monologues fill many

The Legal Retort

No malice in practice From The Practice of Medicine to The malpractice mad scene The doctor strives The patient dives The lawyer thrives A Trilogy Malice in Wonderland To treat and retreat from threat of The Legal Doctorin' and Doctrine

Major Scenes in Minor Key

T has been observed that many of Shakespeare's plays have short scenes not indispensable to dramatic plot but significant, nevertheless, in variety of ways. Hereward T. Price, in Mirror Scenes in Shakespeare, describes them when he says, Apparently loose detachable scenes, so-called episodes, are frequent in Shakespeare. They vary in function as well as in techniques, but certain features tend to recur. Many of them are ... mirror scenes, reflecting in one picture either the main theme or some important aspect of the drama. Other offer some kind of contrast to the general run of the action.... Others again affect the plot by keying up or keying down the suspense.' Creizenach called these Szenen des Stillstands.2 They are, in fact, setpieces; and in most instances, they represent marked change in tone. They are quiet scenes in minor key, serving all the ends described by Price-and more. Three of these scenes do much more than to mirror major theme: they provide an emotional experience for the audience which defines major character who might, without the scene, be wrongly interpreted. These scenes are the Garden Scene in Richard II, the Mad Scenes of Ophelia in Hamlet, and the Music-under-the-ground scene in Antony and Cleopatra. In each, the action, not really essential for plot-advancement, is pivotal in the sense that it shows the audience, first and last, how it is supposed to feel about character and about the play as whole. It is commonplace to point out that the Garden Scene in Richard II develops the symbolism of the nation-gone-to-waste under ruler whose sentimental love of country and of kingship are equalled only by his utter neglect of both.3 England, the sea-walled garden, other Eden, has suffered a second fall of cursed man.4 And the gardener, old Adam's likeness and little better thing than earth, unwittingly reports it to the weeping Queen. The irony is, of course, that this natural man is tending his garden as the King is not. The elaborate metaphor of the garden is, indeed, mirroring of the play's subsidiary theme: the necessity of order in the state. However, this mirrorfunction is by no means the principal purpose of the episode. Actually we have no need for reaffirmation of this theme. It has been clear from Act I that