ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the pianto figure as a topical signifier in contemporary operas composed by Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, and John Adams. It argues that the pianto’s topicality is established through its alliance with existing topics in late-Baroque and classical repertoire and through another schematic context that evolved in the nineteenth century. Instead, late Baroque dramatic works offer the definitive schematic contexts by which modern listeners have acquired familiarity with the pianto. In Thomas Ades’s instrumental and dramatic works, one similarly finds a creative extension of Type A pianto with an homage to J. S. Bach. An even more radical fragmentation of Type A pianto is found in Ades’s second opera Tempest in the passage where Prospero sings to his daughter Miranda about his unfortunate exile from Naples. Saariaho’s adoption of Type C pianto presents yet a different polysemic sign.
