Operatic Prisons: Carcerality on the Stage and in Music

Abstract

"This article traces two lines of development in the dramatic and musical representation of carceral settings in the tradition of European opera. On the one hand, the tradition that runs from the Italian operas of the seventeenth century to what is called the romantic “opera of liberation” (Befreiungsoper), could be argued to reflect tragedy on the operatic stage, in which political issues dominate the plot, and the characters’ heroism, and villainy, provides focal thematic material. This article discusses three major instances of this genre: Beethoven’s Fidelio (1814), Puccini’s Tosca (1900), and Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero (1949). On the other hand, a counter-tradition reacts to the seriousness of operas, including the Befreiungsoper, and parodies its bathetic excesses with satirical inversion, as the villains become the heroes. Here we provide a bracket for the first tradition by beginning with John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera and closing with an appreciation of Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 masterpiece, the Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera)."