Sudden Death in Opera

Reviews / Votes

"This book draws on a wealth of experience, knowledge, understanding and, not least, love of opera, aptly defining this our most plural and complete form of artistic creation and expression, to explain the romantic themes of love and death, recurring throughout the operatic canon, and to provide brilliant insights and fascinating forays into the overlapping fields of culture, neuroscience, medicine, philosophy, history and religion."Ian RitchieArtistic Director, The Musical Brain"The nature of, and reasons for, Isolde's collapse and subsequent demise at the end of Tristan go to the heart of this extraordinary book on love and unexplained death in opera. It is a wonderful journey through the emotional landscapes of our cultural history, as expressed in the most empathetically communicative of our art forms - opera."Nigel OsborneComposer"Why are there so many unexplained deaths in opera? Sudden Death in Opera takes the question seriously, and so fills an important gap in the study of opera and indeed all of music. Fascinating, insightful, and with meticulous, sharp readings of some of the nineteenth century's most important operas, the authors utilize their wide and varied knowledge in the fields of music, medicine, and epidemiology to provide us with a refreshingly new and philosophical perspective on the operatic experience. All opera lovers will find something with which to nourish the soul and provoke thought in this beautifully written book." Zak OzmoMusic director and scholar"This is a beautifully produced book and a heroic attempt to explain the ultimately unexplainable. The mysteries of life and death remain, and the contribution of these authors is to show just how pervasively and chronically operatic art has dealt with them rather than to render them any less mysterious by applying the biomedical gaze to understand pathways to the grave or the cultural historical analytic approach to reconcile what death may signify [...] There is much scholarly food for thought here, and the art will be in the intelligent, critical reading of it."Edward and Paula BortnichakThe Wagner Journal, Volume 16, Number 2, 2022"As this volume reminds us, opera has been obsessed with mortality from its origins onwards [...] The authors-a neurologist, a neuro-epidemiologist, and a cultural historian-have chosen sudden unexpected death as their focus for a wide cultural study (quantitative and thematic) of 50 operas (finally listed in Chapter 13), primarily 19th- and 20th-century, with Richard Wagner's featuring prominently. Therefore, themes of transcendence, altered mental states, and love-death, especially in the Romantic period, come to the fore."Linda and Michael HutcheonWagner Notes, Wagner Society of New York