Opera, or the Undoing of Women by Catherine Clément

What is going on? Opera: the theatrical art that brings raw, primitive emotion bubbling up from the subconscious like molten lava from Earth's core.

One woman will not kill or die in the course of the opera named after her, but Agrippina, mother of the emperor Nero, will engage in some very dirty political scheming before Handel brings his 'Agrippina' around to a mandatory happy ending. 10, two women will die of tuberculosis one (a vampire) will be stabbed to death with a silver dagger and Salome, a teenage sex kitten for whom John the Baptist literally loses his head, will be killed by Herod's royal guard while she kisses John's cold, dead lips served up on a silver platter. In the five operas that will be shown here between now and Nov. Whether you agree with her completely or not, she is on to something. the stories repeated a thousand times by men who pursue women and reduce them to nothing.' 'Oh voices, sublime voices, high, clear voices, how you make one forget the words you sing! How beautiful is suffering's melody. The title of Clement's book (as translated from the French and published by the University of Minnesota Press) almost tells the story: 'Opera, or the Undoing of Women.' But she goes into a lot more detail - 200 pages of angry detail, including cool philosophical analyses and violent stream-of-consciousness reactions to operatic experience: She means, specifically, that opera treats women mercilessly, and she could be talking about the opera season that opens with a bang this week in Washington. 'Opera is pitiless,' says French feminist philosopher Catherine Clement in the most original and controversial book about opera in a long while.

Opera, or the Undoing of Women by Catherine Clément