Thesis Format
Monograph
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Music
Supervisor
Ansari, Emily A.
Abstract
Insanity has been important to opera since the genre’s inception. For four hundred years, operas have featured characters driven mad by love, jealousy, and shame. In this same time period, however, cultural understandings of what it means to be insane have changed many times. This dissertation explores nine post-1945 British and American operas with mad characters: Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, Dominick Argento’s The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe and Miss Havisham’s Fire, Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and Michael Tippett’s New Year. In these operas, modern understandings of insanity and mental illness contend with a centuries-old heritage of operatic and theatrical madness. These partially medicalized portrayals of madness demonstrate the growing centrality of medical perspectives to the concept of insanity, and provide new insight into lay understandings of madness in the under-explored second half of the twentieth century.
This dissertation is divided into four chapters, each of which explores a specific convergence of medical thought and operatic imagination. Chapter 1 “The Medical Model,” lays the foundation for later chapters in its discussion of the rising dominance of the medical model in British and American culture, and the consequent structural shift in the dramatic function of operatic madness. Chapter 2, “Hearing Voices,” turns to a specific sonic aspect of twentieth-century mad opera: the hearing of disembodied voices as a fundamental aspect of madness, which I connect to the rising prominence of schizophrenia as a psychiatric diagnosis. Chapter 3, “The Self-Confined Protagonist and the Shadow of the Asylum,” explores the symbolic resonance between self-confined operatic protagonists and the involuntary confinement of insane asylums in the context of the de-institutionalization movement of the mid-twentieth century. Chapter 4, “Alcoholism, Degeneracy, and the Specter of Eugenics,” investigates the processes by which two American operas, The Medium and The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe, collapse alcoholism, madness, and poverty into a single conceptual entity, creating heavily moralized narratives, which demonstrate the hidden legacy of eugenic thinking within American culture.
Summary for Lay Audience
Insanity has been important to opera since the genre’s inception. For four hundred years, operas have featured characters driven mad by love, jealousy, and shame. In this same time period, however, cultural understandings of what it means to be insane have changed many times. This dissertation explores nine twentieth-century British and American operas with mad characters: Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, Dominick Argento’s The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe and Miss Havisham’s Fire, Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and Michael Tippett’s New Year. In these operas, modern understandings of insanity and mental illness combine with a centuries-old heritage of operatic and theatrical madness. These partially medicalized portrayals of madness demonstrate the growing dominance of medical definitions of insanity, and provide insight into lay understandings of madness in the twentieth century.
This dissertation is divided into four chapters, each of which explores a specific convergence of medical thought and operatic imagination. Chapter One “The Medical Model,” lays the foundation for later chapters in its discussion of the rising dominance of medical perspectives in British and American culture, and the consequent structural shift in the dramatic function of operatic madness. Chapter Two, “Hearing Voices,” turns to a specific sonic aspect of twentieth century mad opera: the hearing of disembodied voices as a fundamental aspect of madness, which I connect to the rising prominence of schizophrenia as a psychiatric diagnosis. Chapter Three, “The Self-Confined Protagonist and the Shadow of the Asylum,” explores the symbolic resonance between mad operatic protagonists locked in their homes, and the involuntary confinement of insane asylums. I contextualize this within the decline of insane asylums in the mid-twentieth century. Chapter Four, “Alcoholism, Degeneracy, and the Specter of Eugenics,” investigates the processes by which two American operas, The Medium and The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe, collapse alcoholism, madness, and poverty into a single conceptual entity, creating heavily moralized narratives, which demonstrate the hidden legacy of eugenic thinking within American culture.
Recommended Citation
Wu, Diana, "The Ghosts of Madwomen Past: Historical and Psychiatric Madness on the Late Twentieth-Century Opera Stage" (2022). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 8633.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/8633
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