Mad scene

Not to be confused with The Mad Scene.

A mad scene is an enactment of insanity in an opera, play, or the like. It may be well contained in a number, appear during or recur throughout a more through-composed work, be deployed in a finale, form the underlying basis of the work, or constitute the entire work. They are often very dramatic, representing virtuoso pieces for singers. Some were written for specific singer, usually of a soprano Fach.

Many notable examples were composed for either opere serie or semiserie, as in those of Georg Frideric Handel.

They were a popular convention of French and especially Italian opera in the early 19th century, becoming a bel canto staple. Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is the most famous example. As composers sought more realism (verismo), they adapted the convention and better integrated the scene into the opera.

With the rise of psychology (and advances in psychiatry), modernist composers revived and transformed the mad scene in expressionist operas and similar genres (e.g., melodramas, monodramas). Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg depicted madness in new and dissonant idioms in the early 1900s. Berg and Britten wrote mad scenes for male roles.

The modern musical theatre was also influenced by the operatic mad scene, as in Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard or Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

Some ballets contain similar scenes, most notably Adam's Giselle.

Notable examples

Francesco Cavalli

• Didone, Act 2
• L'Egisto, Act 3

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"

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Idomeneo, "D'Oreste, d'Ajace"

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 locus classicus
• 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"

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"

Richard Strauss

• Salome, finale
• Elektra

Arnold Schoenberg

• Erwartung in toto

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

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)

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 in toto

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 & 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"

See also

• Female hysteria
• Hysteria
• Jean-Martin Charcot
• Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital
• Rage aria

References

Bibliography

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• Anderson, James (1993) The Complete Dictionary of Opera & Operetta, New York
• Arias, Enrique. 1999. "Reflections from a Cracked Mirror: Madness in Music and Theory of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries—An Overview". In A Compendium of American Musicology: Essays in Honor of John F. Ohl, eds. Enrique Arias, Susan M. Filler, William V. Porter, and Jeffrey Wasson, 133–154. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-1536-1 (hbk).
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