Knives and Tears: Representations of Masculinity in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera

This chapter shows how an 'anthropological' approach to representing late nineteenth-century Italian society is suited to the analysis of opera. It suggests that the gender-interested musicologist should work across a number of different disciplines, bringing the history of opera into an encounter with the history of gender and with broader social and cultural histories. The chapter provides issues of music dramaturgy with representations of masculinity in the syntax of opera and opera libretti, and it will compare them with contemporaneous playwrights' representations of male characters. It focuses on the extent to which operatic masculinity, especially in the context of the theatrical aesthetics of Verismo, reflected, and perhaps perpetuated, its audience's imaginations, desires and frame of mind. The chapter describes libretti of Cavalleria rusticana and Silvano–both set to music by Mascagni–and I gioielli della Madonna by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari.