Madness

I'm exploring various shades of madness right now, namely those of Ophelia.

Shakespeare's works have been a particularly fertile source of inspiration for many composers, and Hamlet is no exception. The character of Ophelia has sparked several variations, and I'm working on four.

The first is a little-known aria by Franco Faccio called "Sortita d'Ofelia". It's from his opera, Amleto, which was written in the mid-19th century. This is a soaring bel canto piece with lots of portamenti (slides between notes), legato, and rich lyricism. It is tonal and represents Ophelia before she goes mad. She basically tells Hamlet that the royal marriage seems black to her; something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (I know - that isn't her line in the original play.) Then, she goes on to tell him not to worry, that he should doubt everything -- that the stars shine in the heavens, that the sun radiates, that seeds germinate, people's tears and people's smiles, and even the angels in paradise -- but he should believe in love.

The next piece is in English and is by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a twentieth century Italian composer who eventually moved to America. His piece is a study in multiple personality disorder. He has taken Shakespeare's lines for Ophelia and smashed them together in a single monologue. She flits from mourning her father, to spouting nursery rhymes, to talking about St. Valentine's Day and how men cannot be held responsible for deflowering maidens and then leaving them (perhaps a veiled reference to Hamlet's rejection of her), to blessing all Christian souls as she drowns at the end.

Another twentieth-century composer who wrote for Ophelia is Richard Strauss. He wrote a set of three songs that are kaleidescopic. Fragments of them seem tonal in their own individual universes, but the bits are collected together in an ever-shifting sonic landscape that creates the sense of a not-quite-rationality. You can just start to make sense of something when it leaps out from under you. These pieces are written in German, and the text is similar to that of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's.

Finally, Ernest Chausson, a nineteenth-century composer, wrote a song called "Chanson d'Ophélie" that is in French. It is a short, melancholy piece that deals entirely with Ophelia's mourning her father. "Il est mort, ayant bien souffert, Madame." "He is dead, having suffered much, Madame," she begins.

Several different portraits at several different stages of madness, perhaps with several different Ophelias. I'm thinking of using these pieces as a set on my recital next year. I may explore how Ophelia was understood in the different cultures and time periods when/where each of these pieces was written to get a sense of how to portray Ophelia differently.

For now, though, it's back to the land of sanity and paper-writing.

~Hope