“Shame! Fury! Grief!”: Mozart’s “Hysterical” Arias

Abstract

Many music scholars have used the term “hysterical” to describe opera characters and arias. However, there are significant inconsistencies among the ways in which researchers deploy the term. In this thesis, the term “hysterical” refers to a female character’s untempered expression of negative emotions caused by some aspect of the patriarchal society in which she lived. The definition of “hysterical” used here is framed by both colloquial uses and feminist perspectives. Although scholars often label three of the four arias in this analysis as “rage arias,” this thesis applies the label “hysterical” because it effectively communicates the complexity of the misogynist social constructions through which these fictional women lived, as well as the significant textual, music-structural, and stylistic differences between these arias and “rage arias” sung by male characters. This thesis provides a brief history and definition of hysteria, a taxonomy of Musical Signifiers of Hysteria, and a textual, formal, and hermeneutic analysis of four hysterical arias from Mozart’s operas. This study revealed that there are striking stylistic and non-normative formal features shared among the hysterical arias of Elettra in Idomeneo, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, and Die Königin der Nacht in Die Zauberflöte.