Voices of Madness: Gender, Insanity, and Hysteria in Opera and Art Song
Performance 2025 Graduate ExhibitionPresentation by Emma Arachtingi
Copresented by Emma Arachtingi
Exhibition Number 407
Abstract
My project examined the history and evolution of psychiatry and culture surrounding madness and hysteria as reflected in opera. I studied operas from early to mid-1800s, when psychiatry emerged as a distinct field, and contrasted those with selections from the twentieth century. In the recital portion of this project, I performed pieces by Donizetti, Bellini, Strauss, and Previn, which all featured female protagonists suffering from madness or hysteria. In the lecture portion, I discussed how psychiatrists like Lombroso, Clouston, and Freud shared ideas about the most common causes and treatments for female hysteria. I showed how these sociomedical attitudes influenced the operatic depictions of characters experiencing madness. This project highlights how closely popular beliefs about hysteria are tied to its depictions in opera, informing our own cultural understandings of gender and mental health.
Importance
This project provides valuable resources for performers who wish to understand the historical context of depictions of madness and hysteria in opera. In preparation to perform a role in an opera, singers typically conduct an in depth study of the time period and culture the composer and librettist lived and worked in, as well as a study of the time period showcased in the opera. My research offers a clear distillation of how the history of madness as a medical diagnosis informed the historical context of these artists and their characters. By understanding the context these works were created, performers are better prepared to interact with these ideas, being conscious of how their presentation of these operas can reinforce or subvert the ideas contained within them.
DEI Statement
Throughout the history of Western medicine, women have been chronically under-studied and often diagnosed inaccurately in ways that reinforced misogynistic cultural ideas. My project examined some of the ways that these misogynistic beliefs made their way into the popular consciousness by connecting them to the evolution of gendered madness in opera. The ways that these hysterical characters have changed and are currently performed offer valuable insight into the current cultural beliefs about these characters.