‘TB sheets’: Love and disease in <i>La traviata</i>

Groos, Arthur

doi:10.1017/s0954586700004584

Cited by 21 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…According to Arthur Groos's investigations, a heroine's misery is usually associated with her indiscretions and indulgences [7]. Violetta in Act I is repeatedly presented in the text and music as intensely sexually attractive as an individual.…”

Section: Return Of the Prodigal Daughter: Chastity Or Debauchery?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Chastity or Debauchery: Violetta's Portrayal in Verdi's La Traviata

Zhao

2023

CHR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates Violetta, the female protagonist of Verdi's La Traviata, from a modern standpoint, extrapolating from the La Traviata reception to Violetta's portrayal in the text. Violetta Valery possesses qualities of both chastity and debauchery. In weighing in the two directions, Violetta's extravagance and resistance are greatly diminished to move closer to popular morality. Through a series of textual analyses and reception history investigations, this paper will incorporate a gender-related perspective to deconstruct the core of La Traviata's story in the context of contemporary values. In addition, the discussion on Violetta's image provides inspiration for examining the inner and outer space of the character itself. Considering the results, both the conception of the La Traviata story and the characterisation of Violetta are re-creations of the objectification of prostitutes in a patriarchal society. Multiple factors are involved and influence the transformation of Violetta's characterisation. It is also from the heights of modernity that these factors are able to be structured in a socialised and gendered context. Despite having the potential to become Europe's nineteenth-century Medea, Violetta Valery remains inevitably weakened in romanticised narratives and descriptions into a one-dimensional individual who combines both the stereotypes of chastity and debauchery.

show abstract

Section: Return Of the Prodigal Daughter: Chastity Or Debauchery?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Chastity or Debauchery: Violetta's Portrayal in Verdi's La Traviata

Zhao

2023

CHR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In comparison, what does La Traviata have to offer? Musicologists have written interestingly about the striking verisimilitude of this first depiction of a consumptive death in opera (Groos, ). Nobody, however, does anything very terrible to anybody else in this opera.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

La traviataand Oedipus

Grier¹

2015

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores the oedipal themes of Verdi's La Traviata, and proposes that it is his masterly treatment of their complexity which accounts for the psychological power of the opera. It is suggested that a particular quality of this opera lies in its ordinariness: no gross psychopathology is displayed, and yet it is mesmerizing. The claims of the eminent musicologist Joseph Kerman are explored that, in opera, music trumps words when there is a conflict between the apparent meanings of the libretto and the feel of the music, with special reference to the famous duet between Violetta (the 'fallen woman' - the traviata) - and her lover's father, Giorgio Germont, in which his harsh condemnation of her as conveyed by the libretto text seems to be softened, indeed quite altered, by the music. Other contradictions between the apparently explicit meaning of the text and the implicit sense of the music are also examined. These conflicts are illuminated by John Steiner's theory of two versions of the Oedipus situation, one paranoid-schizoid and the other depressive, which are contrasted with Grunberger's Oedipal views.

show abstract

“…Building on recent work that examines opera through the lens of medical and psychological ideas my use of Krafft-Ebing's text as a means of interpreting an older work allowed me to scrutinize Die Fledermaus through the eyes of the 1890s. 587 While considering how the audience might view Die Fledermaus in performance at the Hofoper, I also considered what Krafft-Ebing's new text said about masculinity. Even if the characters' behaviour was the same in 1894 at the Hofoper as it had been in 1874 at the Theater an der Wien, Krafft-Ebing's text provided a new perspective on the reasons for the behaviour, using science to justify this conduct.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing Masculinity in Johann Strauss's 'Die Fledermaus'

Connor¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

<p>This thesis explores the performance and articulation of masculinity in Johann Strauss’s third operetta, Die Fledermaus. Since the operetta’s premiere at the Theater an der Wien on 5 April 1875, Die Fledermaus has become one of the most enduring works in the operetta repertory. Die Fledermaus is regularly performed in all the world’s major opera houses but, despite its popularity, there exist relatively few critical studies of this operetta, and fewer still that address the significance of gender in the piece. In this thesis I argue that as a work with an unusual number of male characters originating in later nineteenth-century Vienna — a period and place where masculinities were moulded by complex, rigid social codes and distinctions — significant new insight can be gained by approaching the work through its articulation of masculinities. The male characters in Die Fledermaus also exhibit several elements of troubled, atypical, and non-heroic forms of masculinity. The title ‘Performing Masculinities in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus’ alludes to the idea that masculinity and femininity are highly mutable and individual forms of performance, conditioned by a variety of personal and societal influences. For several decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines have examined the significance of gender in opera from many theoretical perspectives. New analyses of opera conducted under the disciplinary umbrella of feminist musicology have provided a challenging discursive illumination of the position of women in opera. More recently, interest in studying operatic masculinities has burgeoned, firstly as a response to a wider scholarly interest in critical masculinities and secondly as a recognition of the need to dissect, problematize, and even pathologize the varied manifestations of masculinity in opera. However, research investigating operatic masculinities has seldom broached the unique and specific qualities of operetta. The primary goal of this thesis is to develop a new critical understanding of Die Fledermaus, using its depictions of masculinities to challenge generic and popular clichés about the work. An interdisciplinary approach to this project combines musical and textual analysis with cultural history and masculinity theory. My study considers a range of primary and archival sources — including historical newspapers and journals, scores and recordings of operetta, personal papers, and iconography — all of which help to illuminate cultural constructions of masculinity in late nineteenth-century Vienna, relevant to the reception of Die Fledermaus. Secondary sources from a variety of disciplines, including political and social history, medical and art history, philosophy, and literary studies, help to shape the broad historical context for the thesis, while connecting this context with the ways that Die Fledermaus articulates masculinity. By making use of cultural products contemporary with the creation and early performances of Die Fledermaus, to make a contextual analysis of the characters’ behaviour and interactions, the thesis presents Die Fledermaus as a reflection of society; inherent in this reflection are concerns about ideal, correct, and problematic forms of masculinity. These themes are manifest in Chapter 1, which traces how the male characters contend with the conventions of manly honour and Satisfaktionsfähigkeit, two concepts critical to Viennese masculinities in the late nineteenth century. The second chapter discusses the character Orlofski, whose synthesis of Russian and Austro-German traits and types of masculinity emerges through his Langeweile and his resemblance to the Russian ‘superfluous man’ (líshniy chelovék). Chapter 3 continues the exploration of Orlofski but considers the intersection of masculinity and the travesti role, and the reception of early performers of Orlofski at the Theater an der Wien and Hofoper. The fourth chapter steps away from Vienna, turning its attention to the first performance of Die Fledermaus in London. The chapter highlights the theory that geography and culture play a crucial role in the construction of masculinities by examining the connections between Charles Hamilton Aidé’s adaptation of the operetta and the intellectual milieu of Aidé, Matthew Arnold, G. H. Lewes, and their peers. In Chapter 5, the thesis moves back to fin de siècle Vienna, when Die Fledermaus began a new life at the Hofoper, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing presented to the world in Psycopathia Sexualis his newly medicalized and pathologized view of masculinity. I suggest that viewing Die Fledermaus from the perspective of Krafft-Ebing’s texts would have given some in the Hofoper audience a new insight or justification for the behaviour of Strauss and Genée’s characters. In sum, the thesis offers a detailed exploration of Die Fledermaus, connecting its characters’ performances or articulations of masculinity with a variety of musical, historical, and cultural contexts. The thesis illuminates new perspectives on the operatic masculinities within Die Fledermaus and contributes to the larger body of scholarship concerning masculinities in Habsburg Vienna.</p>

show abstract

‘TB sheets’: Love and disease in La traviata

Cited by 21 publications

References 4 publications

Chastity or Debauchery: Violetta's Portrayal in Verdi's La Traviata

Chastity or Debauchery: Violetta's Portrayal in Verdi's La Traviata

La traviataand Oedipus

Performing Masculinity in Johann Strauss's 'Die Fledermaus'

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About