UID:
almafu_9958352176702883
Format:
1 online resource(239p.) :
,
illustrations.
Edition:
Electronic reproduction. : Harvard University Press, 2004. Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Edition:
System requirements: Web browser.
Edition:
Access may be restricted to users at subscribing institutions.
ISBN:
9780674335639
Series Statement:
Convergences: Inventories of the Present
Content:
Our 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.
Content:
Our modern narratives of science and technology can only go so far in teaching us about the death that we must all finally face. 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.
Note:
Frontmatter --
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Contents --
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Illustrations --
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Introduction Music and "Murky Death" --
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1. The Contemplation of Death --
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2. Eros and Thanatos Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde --
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3. "All That Is, Ends" Living while Dying in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen --
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4. Orphic Rituals of Bereavement --
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5. "’Tis a Consummation Devoutly to Be Wish’d" Staging Suicide --
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6. The Undead --
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Coda "Be Acquainted with Death Betimes..." --
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Notes --
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Acknowledgments --
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Index --
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Backmatter.
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Also available in print edition.
,
In English.
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780674335615
Language:
English
DOI:
10.4159/harvard.9780674335639
URL:
https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674335639
URL:
https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674335639
