Vocal Victories: Wagner's Female Characters from Senta to Kundry

by Nila Parly

Overview

Vocal Victories is the first musicological comparison of all of Richard Wagner's great female characters. It has long been customary to view them and other opera heroines as victims, because the women, as a rule, perish during the plot of the opera. A closer study of the music of the women reveals, however, that it is in the female characters that the new and groundbreaking musical material comes into being, and that the women are far more in command of the development of the works than a superficial view will show. The book claims that Wagner was far ahead of his time in terms of equality between the sexes, and the musicological analyses are supported by the composer's own writings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788763507714
Publisher:	Museum Tusculanum Press
Publication date:	02/13/2011
Pages:	431
Sales rank:	324,063
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Nila Parly is postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen. She has also been trained as an opera singer at the musical academy Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Table of Contents

Foreword 9

Introduction 13

A snapshot 13

Wagner on stage 16

Senta. Der fliegende Holländer 21

From Heine to Wagner 21

The performative ballad 23

Senta's song - germ of the opera 27

Schroder-Devrient and Fidelio 38

Gender and female characters in Der fliegende Holländer 43

Elisabeth and Venus. Tannhauser 49

Between Der fliegende Hollander and Lohengrin 49

The progressive music of the Venusberg 54

Song to Venus 57

Elisabeth as active onlooker 67

Venus as puppeteer 72

Gender and female characters in Tannhauser 77

Elsa and Ortrud. Lohengrin 83

Folktale and tragedy 83

Elsa's dream and the forbidden question 84

Ortrud the serpent 94

Power of the body 101

Elsa's and Ortrud's fatal synthesis 104

Two interpretations: Nattiez and Cicora 6

Gender and female characters in Lohengrin 112

Briinnhilde. Der Ring des Nibelungen 119

Background 119

Introduction 119

Wagner's aesthetic 120

The 'effeminate' Wagner 126

Wagner's interpretation of the Oedipus myth 130

The genesis of the work 134

Selected interpretations 141

Catherine Clement - structuralism 141

Critique of Clement 144

Leopold: text versus music 148

Nattiez and the growing domination of the music-woman 151

Abbate on the sibyl's final song 156

Briinnhilde's laughter in Abbate's ears 159

Summing up 165

Analyses 171

Feminising of the Renunciation of Love motif 171

Tonal relations 185

Oper und Drama as interpretative strategy 189

Briinnhilde takes control of Wotan's enterprise 193

The other women in Der Ring des Nibelungen 204

The dissonant incest of the twins 208

How the symbols of the Ring change hands 212

Struggle for a feminine ending 215

Gender and female characters in Der Ring des Nibelungen 224

Isolde. Tristan und Isoide 233

Briinnhilde versus Isolde 233

Isolde's power over Tristan 234

The music and the woman 238

The second death 241

Isolde's Liebestod: woman's ruin? 247

Or triumph? 252

The endless melody 263

The Gesamtmelodie 265

Through Isolde's eyes 270

The 'Tristan chord' 274

Gender and female characters in Tristan und Isolde 279

Eva. Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg 285

Background 285

Master's mistress courting 286

Where the shoe pinches 290

Birth of the drama in the overture 294

The Tristan und Isolde theme 301

Gender and female characters in Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg 305

Kundry. Parsifal 309

From Wolfram to Wagner 309

Act 1: The original woman, Eve 316

Act 2: Courtesan Mary Magdalene 326

Act 3: Pure Virgin Mary 339

Visual dialectics of the score 344

Wagner's final opera triad 350

Fear of woman - fear of death 354

The Good Friday Music 358

Kundry's A minor death 362

Gathering the threads 366

Gender and female characters in Parsifal 372

Conclusion 379

Notes 387

Bibliography 419

Musical Scores 425

Index 427