Opera : The Art of Dying / Michael Hutcheon, Linda Hutcheon.
2013
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Title
Opera : The Art of Dying / Michael Hutcheon, Linda Hutcheon.
Author
Hutcheon, Linda, author.
Edition
Reprint 2014
ISBN
9780674335639
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]
Copyright
©2004
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (239 p.) : 10 halftones
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/harvard.9780674335639 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
782.1
Summary
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.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)
Added Author
Hutcheon, Michael, author.
Series
Convergences: Inventories of the Present ; 29
In
HUP e-dition: Art & Architecture eBook Package
HUP e-dition: Complete eBook Package
HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
HUP e-dition: Complete eBook Package
HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
Available in Other Form
print 9780674335615
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Online Access
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Illustrations
Introduction Music and "Murky Death"
1. The Contemplation of Death
2. Eros and Thanatos Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
3. "All That Is, Ends" Living while Dying in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen
4. Orphic Rituals of Bereavement
5. "'Tis a Consummation Devoutly to Be Wish'd" Staging Suicide
6. The Undead
Coda "Be Acquainted with Death Betimes..."
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Backmatter
Contents
Illustrations
Introduction Music and "Murky Death"
1. The Contemplation of Death
2. Eros and Thanatos Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
3. "All That Is, Ends" Living while Dying in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen
4. Orphic Rituals of Bereavement
5. "'Tis a Consummation Devoutly to Be Wish'd" Staging Suicide
6. The Undead
Coda "Be Acquainted with Death Betimes..."
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Backmatter