Date of Award
Summer 8-2014
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)
Department
Music
Committee Chair
Maryann Kyle
Committee Chair Department
Music
Committee Member 2
Taylor Hightower
Committee Member 2 Department
Music
Committee Member 3
Edward Hafer
Committee Member 3 Department
Music
Committee Member 4
Joseph Brumbeloe
Committee Member 4 Department
Music
Committee Member 5
Susan Ruggiero-Mezzadri
Committee Member 5 Department
Music
Abstract
In the nineteenth century the character of Ophelia transformed from a minor role in Hamlet into one of the great muses of the Romantic period. Ophelia’s rise to an archetype of feminine madness was not a result of Shakespeare’s pen alone, but of the accumulation of interpretations of her character from actresses, artists, critics, writers, musicians, and social attitudes toward women. This paper focuses on nineteenth-century interpretations of her death, specifically art song.
A brief survey of the nineteenth-century European cultural and social climate pertaining to Ophelia is included in the paper:
*Shakespeare in France and Germany
*Nineteenth-Century Actresses in the Role of Ophelia
*The Death of Ophelia
*Ophelia in Art
*Ophelia as the Feminine Ideal
*Ophelia: A Pathetic or Tragic Character
The bulk of the paper focuses on four nineteenth-century art songs (three French and one German) that portray Ophelia’s death: “La mort d'Ophélie,” by Hector Berlioz; “Herzeleid,” by Robert Schumann; “La mort d'Ophélie,” by Camille Saint-Saëns; and “Ophélia” from Poèmes d’automne by Gabriel Dupont. In addition to poetic and musical analysis, correlations are drawn between these songs and paintings depicting her passing: Sir John Everett Millais’s Ophelia, 1852; Arthur Hughes’s Ophelia, 1852; and Eugène Delacroix’s La mort d’Ophélia, 1853.
This paper serves as a cultural and interdisciplinary musical character study of Ophelia, exploring the various interpretations of her death as a heroic transcendence, final act of rebellion, unfortunate accident, or conscious surrender to sadness and death. The reader will take away a better understanding of Ophelia and the various interpretations of the enigmatic character, which will aid artists taking on the role.
Copyright
2014, Jennifer Leigh Tipton
Recommended Citation
Tipton, Jennifer Leigh, "A Document in Death and Madness: A Cultural and Interdisciplinary Study of Nineteenth-Century Art Song Settings on the Death of Opelia" (2014). Dissertations. 273.
https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/273
Included in
Classics Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Musicology Commons, Music Performance Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons, Other Music Commons, Theatre and Performance Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons