A mad scene (French: , Italian: , or German: ) is a depiction of insanity in opera, theater, or other forms. It may occupy a discrete number, appear or recur in through-composed music, anchor a finale, or constitute the entire work. Mad scenes are often dramatic virtuoso pieces for opera singers, sometimes specific singers.
History The mad scene likely first appeared in 17-century Venetian opera with Cavalli's La Didone and, for male , in L'Egisto. In 18th-century Italian opera, especially opera seria or opera semiseria, examples are found in Handel's Orlando and, farcically, Imeneo.
In early Romantic music, the convention was popularized in French and especially Italian opera. Likely modeled on Bellini's I puritani, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is the most famous example. Gilbert and Sullivan satirized it via Mad Meg in Ruddigore. As pushed toward artistic realism, composers integrated mad scenes more organically. In Romantic music, Tchaikovsky often deployed them as finales. Meanwhile, ballet had its own landmark: Adam's Giselle.
Amid scientific advances in psychiatry, many modernist composers revived and transformed the form in expressionist music, including operas, melodramas, and monodramas. In early 20th-century classical music, Strauss's Salome and Elektra, Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire and Erwartung, and Berg's Wozzeck and Lulu depicted madness in new, dissonant idioms. Berg, Stravinsky (The Rake's Progress), and Britten (Peter Grimes) wrote such scenes for male roles. Britten also wrote a mad scene parody for A Midsummer Night's Dream. After Pierrot, Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King further extended the form into modernist music theatre.
Musical theatre more generally drew on the tradition, as in Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. In Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (written 1947–1948), the act 1 finale ("Kiss Me") parodies Lucia's mad scene as Kate's forced kiss sparks an angry cadenza on "never". When Jarmila Novotná declined the role, Pole created the moment for Lucia star Lily Pons, who also declined.
Selected examples
Baroque Francesco Cavalli La Didone, Act 2 L'Egisto, Act 3 Giasone
Alessandro Stradella Il Trespolo tutore
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 Artaserse, "Pallido il sole"
Classical Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Idomeneo, "D'Oreste, d'Ajace"
Ferdinando Paer Agnese
Romantic Gioachino Rossini Ermione, "Essa corre al trionfo" Semiramide, "Deh! Ti ferma"
Gaetano Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor, "Il dolce suono... Ardon gl'incensi... Spargi d'amaro pianto", the Linda di Chamounix, "Linda! Ah che pensato" Maria Padilla Torquato Tasso Anna Bolena, "Piangete voi... Al dolce guidami... Coppia iniqua"
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 Nabucco, "Chi mi toglie" Macbeth, "Una macchia" Attila, "Mentre gonfiarsi l'anima"
Richard Wagner Die Feen, Act 3, "Halloh! Halloh! Lasst alle Hunde los!" Tristan und Isolde
Giacomo Meyerbeer L'étoile du nord, Act 3 Dinorah (originally Le Pardon de Ploërmel), "Ombre légère"
Ferenc Erkel Bánk bán, Act 3, "Tudsz-e madárról éneket?"
Ambroise Thomas Hamlet, "Partagez-vous mes fleurs"
Johannes Brahms Ophelia–Lieder, setting Ophelia's words from the mad scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet
Modest Mussorgsky Boris Godunov, "Oi! Duschno, Duschno"
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky The Oprichnik, finale Mazeppa, finale The Enchantress, finale
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov The Tsar's Bride, "Ivan Sergeyich, khochesh' v sad poydem"
Since 1900 Richard Strauss Salome, finale Elektra, finale
Arnold Schoenberg Erwartung,
Max von Schillings Mona Lisa, Act 2, "So! so! Hab' ich dich!"
Alban Berg Wozzeck, Act 1, Scene 2, "Du [Andres], der Platz ist verflucht!" Wozzeck, Act 3, Scene 4, "Das Messer! Wo ist das Messer?" Lulu, Act 2, Scene 1, "Du Kreatur, die mich durch den Strassenkot zum Martertode schleift!" (Dr. Schön's five-strophe aria)
Sergei Prokofiev Semyon Kotko
Benjamin Britten Peter Grimes, "Steady. There you are, nearly home" Curlew River
Igor Stravinsky The Rake's Progress
Francis Poulenc Dialogues des Carmélites La voix humaine
Hans Werner Henze Elegy for Young Lovers
Peter Maxwell Davies Eight Songs for a Mad King
Leonard Bernstein Mass, XVI. Fraction: "Things get broken"
Dominick Argento Miss Havisham's Fire, finale
John Corigliano The Ghosts of Versailles, "They are always with me"
André Previn A Streetcar Named Desire
Since 2000 Daniel Catán Salsipuedes: a Tale of Love, War and Anchovies (2004), Act 3, Scene 3, "Guzmán, Guzmán, ayúdame" (General García)
Comparable examples Francesco Sacrati La finta pazza, Act 2, Scene 10 (Deidamia)
Henry Purcell "From rosy bow'rs" from The Comical History of Don Quixote, described by Edward Joseph Dent as a "mad song"
Jean-Philippe Rameau Platée, Air de la Folie
Giuseppe Verdi La traviata, "É strano! ... Sempre libera"
Arnold Schoenberg Pierrot lunaire
Giacomo Puccini Suor Angelica, arguably
Milton Babbitt Philomel
Luciano Berio Sequenza III
Olga Neuwirth Lost Highway, Scene 5.4, "There's no smoking here"
Michael Finnissy Gesualdo: Libro Sesto, IV. "Quel 'no' crudel"
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 Ruddigore, "Cheerily carols the lark" The Grand Duke, "I have a rival! Frenzy-thrilled, I find you both together!"
Benjamin Britten A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Pyramus and Thisbe scene
Leonard Bernstein Candide, "Glitter and be gay"
Notes
See also Female hysteria Hysteria Jean-Martin Charcot Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital Rage aria
References
Bibliography
Anderson, James (1993) The Complete Dictionary of Opera & Operetta, New York
Ewen, David (1963) Encyclopedia of the Opera, New York
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