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Verdi and the undoing of women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2006

JOSEPH KERMAN
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Abstract

For a brief period in his career, Verdi wrote operas about compromised or ‘fallen’ women, women condemned for their sexuality: not only Lina in Stiffelio and Violetta in La traviata, but also – if we take into account the way their men regard them – Lida in La battaglia di Legnano, Luisa in Luisa Miller and Leonora in Il trovatore. These women suffer or die. Gilda also dies, in Rigoletto, ultimately a victim of her sexual availability. This essay examines Verdi's contribution to ‘the undoing of women’ and relates it speculatively to his experience as Giuseppina Strepponi's lover around the same time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 21 - 31
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article goes back to a paper given as the Donald J. Grout Memorial Lecture at Cornell in 1999, under the title ‘Some Verdi Heroines’, and then on other occasions. It finds its true home as a tribute to a scholar who deserves much of the credit (and less of the flak) for the reconfiguration of music studies that has taken place in the last twenty years. I remain grateful to the late Lenore Coral for the original invitation to Cornell.