# Is opera the most misogynistic art form?



## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

Here is a recent article from the Manchester Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/26/is-opera-the-most-misogynistic-art-form

Your thoughts?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I wonder if 'misogynist' is being confused with 'masochist'?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

> They stab themselves, throw themselves on funeral pyres, go mad and die. From Aida to Lulu, opera is extravagantly cruel to its female characters. Isn't it time the divas were free to sing to their own tune?


It's hard to imagine stories female audiences would be more interested in. Wagner sure can't compete with the messed up tales of his rivals, and probably the only reason his dramas have survived at all is that the music is head and shoulders above that of any other opera composer. If his music was that of Verdi, nobody would care.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

------deleted-----


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## Guest (Mar 2, 2016)

GreenMamba said:


> Do wet T-shirt contests count as an art form?


Only if they're wearing a horned helmet.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Chordalrock said:


> It's hard to imagine stories female audiences would be more interested in. Wagner sure can't compete with the messed up tales of his rivals, and probably the only reason his dramas have survived at all is that the music is head and shoulders above that of any other opera composer. If his music was that of Verdi, nobody would care.


I prefer the plots in Wagner´s operas over Verdi´s operas.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Do wet T-shirt contests count as an art form?

Seriously, though, this gets at the point:



> Opera is not vanilla, opera is not beige, it is blood red and boiling. Opera is the artform of human catastrophe, the inheritor of the mantle of the darkest aspects of Greek tragedy. The tragedy is of course not just female tragedy (plenty of dead men, too). But the patriarchy makes sure that the women are marked out for special cruelty. Opera, and especially 19th century opera, allows dangerous women to coruscate thrillingly on the stage for a few short hours - then murders them.


The old-fashioned patriarchy isn't limited to opera, but manifests itself in extreme ways in opera.

While the title of the article is provocative, I think it is well-written and interesting. Don't assume the author's answer is "yes."


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Fact is nice women suffering and meeting gruesome deaths just make up great stories and that does not only apply to opera but also other art forms.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Edgar Alan Poe wrote an essay on composing stories in which he suggested that one of the best ways to evoke a powerful response... akin to Burke's "sublime"... was through the death (especially the tragic/youthful/violent death) of a beautiful woman. Outside of comic operas what does one expect? The characters sitting about playing canasta and sipping tea?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Sloe said:


> I prefer the plots in Wagner´s operas over Verdi´s operas.


My point was that the writer of that article seems to completely ignore the question of "what do women enjoy then?"

Well, what do women enjoy? One incredibly sexist thing they enjoy is Fifty Shades of Grey. Then you realise it was written by a woman as fan-fiction and became a mega hit - because women actually love reading that sort of thing that was written by someone like them who understands what turns them on. It's an incredibly sexist story until you realise THAT IS WHAT WOMEN WANT.

So the writer of that article should ask herself - is it the operas that are sexist or is it she who is sexist? Does she object to the portrayal of women or does she object to the fact that women are in fact the kind of people who love that stuff?

These things don't exist because of patriarchy, they exist because people love that stuff. If there is a problem here at all, the problem begins and ends with people themselves as consumers of these products.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I think the article makes a good start at looking at this 'hot topic', however some of the facts are wrong, it contradicts itself and some of its points are illogical. It raises some provoking questions which is a good thing.

N.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Chordalrock said:


> My point was that the writer of that article seems to completely ignore the question of "what do women enjoy then?"
> 
> Well, what do women enjoy? One incredibly sexist thing they enjoy is Fifty Shades of Grey. Then you realise it was written by a woman as fan-fiction and became a mega hit - because women actually love reading that sort of thing that was written by someone like them who understands what turns them on. It's an incredibly sexist story until you realise THAT IS WHAT WOMEN WANT.
> 
> ...


All women do not love Fifty Shades of Grey. My mother and grandmother liked it, but they are very old women who grew up rather sexually repressed, so perhaps there is a certain satisfaction in being at last able to openly read a book whose subject matter would have been considered shocking until recently. Personally, I find pornography icky and don't see the appeal of the particular fetishes which that series covers. Perhaps we should say that 'all women' love badly written pervy fanfic in the way that 'all men' love Nuts magazine or whatever the male equivalent is- albeit not necessarily for the same reasons!

Whether 'women are in fact the kind of people who love this stuff' is an interesting question. I wonder whether anyone knows what percentage of opera audiences in different times and places would have been female, and to what extent operas were intentionally composed and staged in a manner that appealed specifically to women. I remember reading on JSTOR an article by the excellent musicologist Karen Henson called 'Victor Capoul, Marguerite Olagnier's Le Saïs, and the Arousing of Female Desire'. Capoul* was a heartthrob lyric tenor of the 1870s and 80s and Olagnier a rare female composer, and Henson puts the tastes and especially the sexuality of female audiences of the time at the heart of her analysis:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/831790?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
http://jams.ucpress.edu/content/52/3/419

It's not really clear that 'these things don't exist because of patriarchy' because most of the works in the operatic canon were composed at a time when men had nearly all the power, and so the tastes catered for were likely to be mainly those of upper middle class heterosexual men. How much this was the case is the question, as is how we as Enlightened Modern People are to respond to and interpret the arguably misogynistic aspects of operatic works and their performance!

* Capoul lived long enough to make a record at the age of 66, which shows him in poor voice but still with a trace of his famous mezza voce:


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Sloe said:


> Fact is nice women suffering and meeting gruesome deaths just make up great stories and that does not only apply to opera but also other art forms.


It's true, but it's not _just _women. Ms Higgins says that male operatic characters are allowed to be 'Everymen', and some may well be, but opera's heroes (the clue is in the name!) frequently come to equally tragic ends. It's no less tragic or bloody to be Romeo than to be Juliet.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sardou, author of the play that became Puccini's _Tosca_, said the key to success with audiences was to "torture the woman."

Puccini was the unequaled master of that genre.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Figleaf said:


> Personally, I find pornography icky and don't see the appeal of the particular fetishes which that series covers.


I wouldn't call sadism and masochism or dominance and submission "fetishes". They are impulses and inclinations that have their origin in distant evolutionary past when sexuality was about power. Much in the human sexuality is still that of the chimpanzee. It is the looks-focussed sexuality of the modern world that is the fetish, the much more recent entree in the arena of evolution. Before anybody had any looks that anyone could have cared about, there was a lot of hair, power, and violence.

(Although it must be said that the majority of males appear to have the sexuality of a "beta male", non-sadistic, romantic, softie sort of thing focused on looks and protecting cute things rather than demonstrating power and dominance via violence in the manner of the alpha male. Female sexuality though - I believe - is still in line with finding the alpha male sexy and caring not at all about beta males sexually beyond looks.)



Figleaf said:


> Perhaps we should say that 'all women' love badly written pervy fanfic in the way that 'all men' love Nuts magazine or whatever the male equivalent is- albeit not necessarily for the same reasons!


I think it's an interesting thing to note that the most popular female porn is always about "bad boys" and alphaness of some sort - a focus not so much on looks as on the right kind of personality - whereas the vast majority of males seem to be entirely looks focused in terms of what they look for in their porn. Men watch porn, but women read it.



Figleaf said:


> All women do not love Fifty Shades of Grey. My mother and grandmother liked it, but they are very old women who grew up rather sexually repressed, so perhaps there is a certain satisfaction in being at last able to openly read a book whose subject matter would have been considered shocking until recently.


Another possible speculation would be that women from old repressive eras where they didn't have much to do had (1) the time to explore their sexuality and learn themselves better and didn't have all that much content in their lives otherwise and (2) had to explore their sexuality via fantasy because not much else was available to them, which method was much better for achieving true self-knowledge. It could simply be that you just haven't met the right sort of hot bad boy who would have revealed to you the content of the shadowy corners of your sexuality.

That's not to say there aren't many exceptions, but when I see feminist writers complaining about female submissiveness or something, I see them complaining about something that was formed already in the distant evolutionary past when we weren't even human yet. Patriarchy was, if anything, a sort of beta uprising that tried to evolve a new type of woman and a new type of man - more civilised and so on. The Romans of the Republic thought of marriage as a duty which neither side expected to be "happy" or much fun. It was just what you did for the nation and for the future generations, a sort of patriotic sacrifice. It wasn't about subjugating women any more than men were subjugating other men and themselves in the service of civilisation.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I am not masochistic enough to read _all_ of that article but my first reaction was that the vast majority of the operas that were mentioned were were based on pre-existing stories. That kind of tragedy is something that has been endemic to literature from Virgil (and before) to the present day. Now a more interesting question would be why composers seem to want to write so many operas based on tragic themes. Perhaps they are more sadists than misogynists!


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Chordalrock said:


> I wouldn't call sadism and masochism or dominance and submission "fetishes".


What, tying up and dungeons and stuff?  Sounds pretty fetishistic to me!



Chordalrock said:


> Another possible speculation would be that women from old repressive eras where they didn't have much to do had (1) the time to explore their sexuality and learn themselves better and didn't have all that much content in their lives otherwise and (2) had to explore their sexuality via fantasy because not much else was available to them, which method was much better for achieving true self-knowledge.


Very likely true.



Chordalrock said:


> It could simply be that you just haven't met the right sort of hot bad boy who would have revealed to you the content of the shadowy corners of your sexuality.


:lol: I hope my intended doesn't stumble across this thread, lol



Chordalrock said:


> IThat's not to say there aren't many exceptions, but when I see feminist writers complaining about female submissiveness or something, I see them complaining about something that was formed already in the distant evolutionary past when we weren't even human yet. Patriarchy was, if anything, a sort of beta uprising that tried to evolve a new type of woman and a new type of man - more civilised and so on. The Romans of the Republic thought of marriage as a duty which neither side expected to be "happy" or much fun. It was just what you did for the nation and for the future generations, a sort of patriotic sacrifice. It wasn't about subjugating women any more than men were subjugating other men and themselves in the service of civilisation.


I'm not totally sure what you mean about 'feminist writers complaining about female submissiveness'- do you mean that they criticize submissive women of the present day who have internalised misogynistic views of themselves (or whatever causes them to behave submissively) or do you mean feminists criticizing artistic depictions of women who either are approvingly presented as submissive or who are punished for not being submissive, _pour encourager les autres_? I don't think one has to consider oneself a feminist in any very doctrinaire way to feel a little uneasy when, for example, Don José kills Carmen and we are led to feel more pity for the poor tormented man than for the veritable she-devil who gas goaded him to desertion, crime and murder. In a real life story whose facts were similar, it is unlikely many well-intentioned people would sympathise with the killer and condemn his victim, however dislikeable she seemed. Experiencing and appreciating art from the past is full of this pressure (sometimes subtle, sometimes persuasive, sometimes neither) to identify with a male oppressor and against his relatively powerless and usually doomed female antagonist. I think this is the problem that the article attempts to highlight, albeit in a clumsy and rambling way. You mention the Romans, and I think Ms Higgins would have been quite at home discussing them, as she holds a Classics degree. They are an even better example than eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe of a culture familiar to us yet unreachably distant and different from us. On the one hand, Roman marriage was 'just what you did' (_plus ça change!_) on the other hand, Roman family life involved weird (to us) stuff like prominent families adopting adult sons of other families as a stabilising, meritocratic way of continuing the dynasty.



> Female sexuality though - I believe - is still in line with finding the alpha male sexy and caring not at all about beta males sexually beyond looks.)


Maybe, but we tend to grow out of that attitude after a few painful experiences!

I don't know why there is a red exclamation mark in the title of the post- I didn't intentionally put it there!


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Sardou, author of the play that became Puccini's _Tosca_, said the key to success with audiences was to "torture the woman."
> 
> Puccini was the unequaled master of that genre.


Don't forget the other ones, the one's who drive's all the woman to "mad scenes"


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> *
> :lol: I hope my intended doesn't stumble across this thread, lol*


Golly. I'm supposed to turn myself into a 'hot bad boy' alpha male at my time of life.:guitar:

Mrs Figleaf, prepare yourself for some "punishment" next time you cross the border.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Chordalrock said:


> It's hard to imagine stories female audiences would be more interested in. Wagner sure can't compete with the messed up tales of his rivals, and probably the only reason his dramas have survived at all is that the music is head and shoulders above that of any other opera composer. *If his music was that of Verdi, nobody would care.*


You care to give some statistical proof of that sweepmg statement?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

The article is a typical Guardian product in which a frustrated feminist does not appear to get the fact that operas in the past were written by people with a different outlook on life than exists today and their operas are a product of their outlook. Why Carmen was an initial failure as people could not accept the image a free-spirited woman even if she was bumped off at the end. Opera is a product of its social history. It is also fiction - it doesn't really happen. So get over it!


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> The article is a typical Guardian product in which a frustrated feminist does not appear to get the fact that operas in the past were written by people with a different outlook on life than exists today and their operas are a product of their outlook. *Why Carmen was an initial failure as people could not accept the image a free-spirited woman even if she was bumped off at the end. *Opera is a product of its social history. It is also fiction - it doesn't really happen. So get over it!


I don't know much about what happened at the premiere, but I think there was more to it than that. For example, Paul Lhérie had intonation problems and couldn't stay in tune during the unaccompanied 'Dragons d'Alcala' song and had to be accompanied from the wings by the prompter, who was none other than Vincent d'Indy, on the harmonium. (Regrettably I just found out that a 'harmonium' is not the same as a harmonica, which makes my mental picture of that story a lot less funny... )

I doubt Ms Higgins is a frustrated feminist. I'd be deliriously happy if I had her job. I think she just isn't the best writer for that particular article. A 'new musicology' academic with a feminist or 'queer' perspective who was prepared to write in plain English for the occasion would have been the ideal choice. Another Guardian article that fits your argument better is Zoe Williams' column on a regie Guillaume Tell. She's an excellent writer on social and political issues (leaving aside the question of whether one agrees with her on any given issue or not) but it's obvious from that article that she knows diddly squat about opera and has just been drafted in to provide an off the peg mainstream feminist view which tells us nothing about Rossini:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/20...era-outcry-is-over-offence-to-music-not-women


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Figleaf said:


> I don't know much about what happened at the premiere, but I think there was more to it than that.


"French audiences are essentially conservative, and "Carmen" came upon them like a shock. "Its passionate force," says one authority, "was miscalled brutality, and the suspicion of German influence which Bizet's clever use of guiding themes excited, was in itself enough to alienate the sympathies of the average Frenchman in the early seventies." Bizet, in short, had broken loose from the classical French style. His music displayed some startling, novel features, and for these the polite tastes of the French public were not prepared."


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

The nice thing about unattributed musical criticism is that you can always find some quote that suits your preconceptions. The reality is usually nothing so simple.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Becca said:


> The nice thing about unattributed musical criticism is that you can always find some quote that suits your preconceptions. The reality is usually nothing so simple.


And this sort of statement doesn't suit your own preconceptions?


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Wood said:


> Golly. I'm supposed to turn myself into a 'hot bad boy' alpha male at my time of life.:guitar:


'By day he's a mild mannered accountant with a side parting and tank top, by night he dons black leathers and races motorbikes down the autobahn at 140 mph'. I think you're more than 'bad' enough for me already, hun. 

Anyway- @ Chordalrock and anyone else interested in the subject of alpha males- it's probably a misapprehension that alpha males must be 'bad boys', i.e. psychopathic, risk taking jerks. Just take a look at the prison population and ask how that behaviour has worked out for them!


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

as if men don't suffer in operas as much as women?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> as if men don't suffer in operas as much as women?


In Wagner, arguably, they suffer more. The Dutchman is condemned by Satan to sail the seas forever; Tannhauser is condemned by his society and sentenced to eternal damnation by the Pope; Tristan must deliver the woman he loves to be married to his uncle, suffers a mortal wound, undergoes excruciating self-psychoanalysis, and dies just as Isolde returns to him; Siegmund is separated from his twin sister in childhood, spends his life pursued by enemies, and as soon as he finds his sister and finds love is condemned to death by his own father; Amfortas lives with an incurable wound and suffers guilt so intense that he can only yearn for death. In the same operas, Senta is too entranced by her romantic fantasy to be really unhappy; Elisabeth is unhappy for Tannhauser but faithful and strong; Isolde is humiliated by the way she is treated but gets to die in ecstasy with a vision of Tristan, a fate preferable to a loveless marriage; Sieglinde suffers as much as Siegmund, but lives to bear Siegfried; Brunnhilde is stripped of her valkyrie status and is ultimately betrayed by forces beyond her control, but she gains wisdom, joins Siegfried ecstatically in death, and consciously brings down the curtain on the regime of the gods.

If this is a competetion for who wins the gold medal for pain and suffering, I'd say that in Wagner the men win by a hair or two. Of course there's Kundry and multiple personality disorder...


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> as if men don't suffer in operas as much as women?


Do you know a male role as difficult as the mad scene of Lucia de Lammermoor?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Pugg said:


> Do you know a male role as difficult as the mad scene of Lucia de Lammermoor?


difficult in what sense? to sing or to act? Boris Godunov might well qualify for the latter.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

I haven't read the article. The thesis is patently absurd. Opera doesn't come close to gangsta rap for hate-filled misogyny.

I once got a couple of teens to turn down their music on the train because they were playing it loudly and enjoying the shock of a couple of elderly ladies. 
The lyrics were very simple: "motherf.....r, motherf.....r, motherf.....r, f... you, bitch (repeat ad nauseam).


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## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

Steatopygous said:


> I haven't read the article. The thesis is patently absurd. Opera doesn't come close to gangsta rap for hate-filled misogyny.
> 
> I once got a couple of teens to turn down their music on the train because they were playing it loudly and enjoying the shock of a couple of elderly ladies.
> The lyrics were very simple: "motherf.....r, motherf.....r, motherf.....r, f... you, bitch (repeat ad nauseam).


Most of the below the line comments after the article mention the misogyny of rap.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Zhdanov said:


> as if men don't suffer in operas as much as women?


But enough about the audience...


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

GreenMamba said:


> Do wet T-shirt contests count as an art form?


You'd be thinking of _The Wring of the Nippelung_, right?


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Wagner has sometimes been accused of misogyny in his operas, but his female protagonists tend to be gutsy and courageous women. When Tannhauser is about to be killed by the outraged knights for dallying with
Venus , Elisabeth stands up for him and pleads for his life to be spared , and she persuades them to do this and allow him to go to Rome for (unsuccessful ) penance . 
Brunnhilde has the guts to defy her father Wotan and try to defend Siegmund even it it leads to her being stripped of her godhood and being banished to the magic fire .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> Wagner has sometimes been accused of misogyny in his operas, but his female protagonists tend to be gutsy and courageous women. When Tannhauser is about to be killed by the outraged knights for dallying with
> Venus , Elisabeth stands up for him and pleads for his life to be spared , and she persuades them to do this and allow him to go to Rome for (unsuccessful ) penance .
> Brunnhilde has the guts to defy her father Wotan and try to defend Siegmund even it it leads to her being stripped of her godhood and being banished to the magic fire .


Wagner is anything but a misogynist. In fact, his stories can be read as protesting the dehumanizing of women by a male-dominated culture. Senta's yearning for the love of a romantic stranger in preference to the "respectable" Erik can be seen as her need to discover a fuller humanity outside the limitations of a circle of spinning housewives who can imagine nothing beyond their lot. Elisabeth is not only brave in defending Tannhauser, but does not share her contemporaries' puritanical views of sexuality. Isolde would sink the ship and drink poison before submitting to the indignity of being given to a man she does not love. Sieglinde drugs her abusive husband and runs away with her brother-lover.

I think most of the attribution of misogyny to Wagner is based on a misunderstanding of Kundry. Kundry suffers precisely because she is made to embody just those roles that men who cannot deal with the reality of femininity (including the feminine in themselves) project upon women: mother, servant, and seductress. The deepest, albeit not superficially obvious, meaning of _Parsifal_ is not the suppression of the feminine but its reconciliation with the masculine (the masculine Spear must be reunited with the feminine Grail).

Wagner might be accused of romanticizing women, but never of belittling them.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

DavidA said:


> The article is a typical Guardian product in which a frustrated feminist does not appear to get the fact that operas in the past were written by people with a different outlook on life than exists today and their operas are a product of their outlook.


No I'm pretty sure she gets that.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Edgar Alan Poe wrote an essay on composing stories in which he suggested that one of the best ways to evoke a powerful response... akin to Burke's "sublime"... was through the death (especially the tragic/youthful/violent death) of a beautiful woman. Outside of comic operas what does one expect? The characters sitting about playing canasta and sipping tea?


The most important is we are not supposed to like see them suffer.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

I've read the thing in full now. It's an interesting piece because she traverses a vast area, but = to me - has no more significance than that. One thing I really did like: the feminism test of two women having a conversation not about men.
Seems pretty sound to me.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Steatopygous said:


> I've read the thing in full now. It's an interesting piece because she traverses a vast area, but = to me - has no more significance than that. One thing I really did like: the feminism test of two women having a conversation not about men.
> Seems pretty sound to me.


A stupid test the worst is that it is applied for financing films.


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## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

Steatopygous said:


> I've read the thing in full now. It's an interesting piece because she traverses a vast area, but = to me - has no more significance than that. One thing I really did like: the feminism test of two women having a conversation not about men.
> Seems pretty sound to me.


The feminism test of two women having a conversation not about men doesn't prove anything. For example in the originalStar Wars trilogy, are there more than two women? yes. Do they talk to each other? no. Fail.

Now if you look at the prequels, are there more than two women? yes. Do they talk to each other? yes .Do they talk to each other about a subject other than men? yes. Pass.

However Princess Leia is more memorable character than boring Queen Amidala and the prequels suck.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Steatopygous said:


> I've read the thing in full now. It's an interesting piece because she traverses a vast area, but = to me - has no more significance than that. One thing I really did like: the feminism test of two women having a conversation not about men.
> Seems pretty sound to me.


I totally agree with your first point, that was exactly the same feeling I had when reading the article. As for the Bechdel test it raises further questions rather than anything else. As an experiment let's accept the hypothesis of the Bechdel test and agree (just for the purpose of the experiment) that there is such a thing as a feminist opera, does that automatically mean that operas that don't pass the test are by default misogynistic? Can all operas be defined either as feminist or misogynistic? Are there no neutral works?

If Lucia di Lammermoor doesn't pass the test because Alisa and Lucia are having a conversation about Edgardo in act one, is it more misogynistic because Alisa and Lucia don't have a conversation about the price of fish, or is the lack of a conversation about something other than men trumped by her going mad and dying? Furthermore, if Lucia di Lammermoor is intrinsically misogynistic how can it become feminist if a feminist director takes it on? This leads me on to where I think the article is confused and hasn't fully understood the nature of works of fiction:
"Which brings us to another important element of opera: it does not exist inscribed on the page, but as a living, performed act of the theatre, and part of the responsibility of the director is to not accept unscrutinised the assumptions of the time in which it was composed. Mitchell will also direct Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House in London this spring, and part of her job is to flesh out the woman who so famously goes mad and dies."
If there can be misogynistic and feminist productions of the same opera, then it is only logical that the opera can't be misogynistic per se, but rather certain _interpretations_ of the work can be. Therefore a production of an opera can be feminist or misogynistic, but not the opera itself as works of fiction are open to a number of valid interpretations and it is impossible to ascertain which interpretation carries most authority.

N.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Becca said:


> I am not masochistic enough to read _all_ of that article but my first reaction was that the vast majority of the operas that were mentioned were were based on pre-existing stories. That kind of tragedy is something that has been endemic to literature from Virgil (and before) to the present day. Now a more interesting question would be why composers seem to want to write so many operas based on tragic themes. Perhaps they are more sadists than misogynists!


Great point! I have just finished reading 'The Bride of Lammermoor' in preparation for the production of Lucia di Lammermoor mentioned in the article and Sir Walter Scott makes it clear that he condemns the actions of Lucy's family and their forcing her to marry to further their political objectives. Therefore, there is strong internal evidence that the author's interpretation of the book was feminist.

On the other hand I quote the same section from the article:

"Which brings us to another important element of opera: it does not exist inscribed on the page, but as a living, performed act of the theatre, and *part of the responsibility of the director is to not accept unscrutinised the assumptions of the time in which it was composed.* Mitchell will also direct Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House in London this spring, and part of her job is to flesh out the woman who so famously goes mad and dies."

The assumptions of the time? What about the assumptions of our present time? It seems insulting and patronising to me to assume that works of fiction written in a time and/or place where society was more sexist than our own must also have been written from a similarly sexist point of view. Baldassare Castiglione's 'Il libro del cortegiano' provides proof that there have been male feminists around for at least 500 years.

N.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Let's not push the Bechdel test too far. It's funny and not totally without insight, but those who have interacted with me are right about its shortcomings. 
One other point: let's not confuse misogyny with indifference. Very few pre-21st century operas are actually expressing hatred of or contempt for women; it's just that women are often not the key decision-makers. Sometimes of course they are: the two Lady Macbeths spring to mind, among a host of others. What the author of the Guardian article is really lamenting is the unequal place of women in society through the centuries, which opera reflects because it is not detached from the society in which it is composed and performed.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Steatopygous said:


> I've read the thing in full now. It's an interesting piece because she traverses a vast area, but = to me - has no more significance than that. One thing I really did like: *the feminism test of two women having a conversation not about men.*
> Seems pretty sound to me.


Good! Cos fan Tutte passes that easily as the women have quite a few conversations about the men.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

It is from another era with different views. Women couldn't even vote when most famous operas were written. For me it is not misogynistic as I am much more into the divas than I am the male singers with few exceptions.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

I would have guessed English Renaissance carpe diem love poetry to be worse


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Good! Cos fan Tutte passes that easily as the women have quite a few conversations about the men.


They are supposed to have a conversation about something else than a man.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Sloe said:


> They are supposed to have a conversation about something else than a man.


Sorry! Mis-read it! But either way I just can't see the connection. Such reasoning baffles me!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

DavidA said:


> Sorry! Mis-read it! But either way I just can't see the connection.


The point is that a surprising portion of media don't feature independent female characters. If all the female characters talk about together is the male character(s), then they're not really defined in their own right apart from him/them. It's not to say that any work that doesn't pass the test is automatically misogynistic.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

The Bechdel test comes from a comic. It was one (fictional) individual's attempt to limit her consumption of mass media. If a movie passes the Bechdel test, it suggests that (but is neither sufficient nor necessary) it has characters are presented as having an actual life of their own rather than only in relation to the men around them.

It is applied seriously as a way of evaluating movies, but it is neither sufficient nor necessary for great - or even feminist, or feminist-positive - films. It can be interesting to discuss and quantify results. That site has 6389 movies in the database, and 57.6% of them pass all three tests.

The Bechdel test can also be interesting when applied to opera, though the genre is not known for fully-fleshed-out plots so it is at a disadvantage. But one thing not captured in the test that many styles of opera do very well compared to film is bringing out interiority. Movies rarely have monologues explain their hopes, feelings, and desires, whereas many operas are full of arias where these are expressed. Having a soul-bearing aria goes a long ways towards making a character real.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

I'm glad to see that most people are in agreement with me here. the problem I have with so much of what constitutes discussion of racism and misogyny isn't when people point out actual issues, but when they are so intent on basking in their vainglorious pseudo-conviction that they have to go _backwards_ and write dozens of articles on "Opera is Misogynistic!" and "50 Examples of Racism in the Superman Comics", that screams of desperate cries for attention and borders on intellectually histrionic.


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