as an opera lover who believes that that art form has a
great deal to tell us [even if it is rarely taken seriously in the
kinds of conversation that go on on this list] i'm delighted
by michael chanan's citation of RIGOLETTO as an instance
of the complex ways in which music connects to narrative:
>>Look at opera, where you frequently get
>>situations which make the identification of character and music much
>>more complex, often ambiguous and even contradictory. Take the notorious
>>case of the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto. When he dresses up as a poor
>>student and seduces Gilda to the heart-melting strains of E il sol
>>dell'anima, protesting that fame and glory, power and throne, are but
>>human frailties, we know that that what he's feeling isn't love but
>>lechery, because in Questa o quella, he's already told his courtiers
>>that he's on the make. The music he sings to Gilda is thus a kind of lie
>>(although she can't tell, and falls for him anyway).
but while i think i follow his main claim, that the duke's
serenading of gilda is romantically compelling to the audience
even while that audience is expected to keep in mind that
he's a cad and not to be trusted -- i'm not entirely clear on what
michael's larger point is in relationship to the discussion
narrative [and probably all discourse] often trades on representing
unappealing things in appealing ways [an awkward formulation but
one that i'm using in order to bracket the loaded concept of the
aesthetic; if one is willing to invoke that term then we can say that
what's at stake here is the anesthetization of evil] . . . one need look
no further than shakespeare's iago or milton's satan to find paradigmatic
examples, and hollywood would have gone bust decades ago without
an army of charming and sexy villains whom we love and hate at the
same time -- let scarface or bonnie and clyde or hannibal lecter
serve as cases in point
given that, what in particular characterizes music, either as supplement
or as substitute??
mike
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