Pablo Massa <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Christopher Webber in response to me:
>
>>No. Not every suicide is tragic (c.f.  Chekhov, or Schnitzler).  We're
>>too apt to bandy words and hype every sad event as tragic, which lends
>>reflected dignity to sudden death but debases the coin of the truly tragic.
>
>We will have to turn back to the word "tragedy".

Oh dear, what have I started?!  Having spent a whole University year
studying Tragedy, of course you'll find a different (pretty inadequate)
definition from every time and place that has produced the stuff.
Aristotelian rules are OK for Sophocles and Aeschylus, but they don't
even fit Euripides in, so what hope for later writers?

On the other hand, it's comparatively simple to say what is NOT tragedy
...

>>"Tosca" most certainly is not tragic, merely a melodramatic series of
>>unlucky accidents and temporary derangements.
>
>Oedipus's story is exactly the same.  What else do you want for a
>tragedy?.

With respect, it is not the same at all.  Tosca hasn't the foggiest idea
what she is doing from one moment to the next.  She acts on impulse, rather
with brain, heart and liver.  Her story has a large if rather short term
emotional impact, and the end of it would have been the same whether or not
she'd killed Scarpia, an act which she doesn't reflect much on before or
after the event.

Oedipus's story (c.f. Stravinsky and Enescu's versions) has a huge
resonance precisely because he's told what's going to happen to him from
the start (as are his parents) and in striving to avoid it they all three
- half-wittingly, perhaps - contrive to bring about the very conditions
which bring the prophecies to pass.  The implications for humanity itself
in this tale are immense, and manifold, affecting many areas of our
experience.  There's something utterly absurd about mentioning Sardou
and/or Puccini's sexy heroine in the same breath, or claiming comparable
status.

>>Where is Butterfly's tragic flaw or dilemma? She's prettily deluded,
>>that's all.
>
>So was Ophelia...

Another sad, not tragic, figure.  It's Hamlet's tragedy, not hers.  We only
feel sorrier for her than Rosencrantz or Guildenstern because we know her
better, as Stoppard (and before him Gilbert) proved.  Personally I feel
sorrier for Polonius, but there we are.

>Tragedy is when some forces bigger than ourselves -just as the destiny,
>or stupidity, which is equally incommensurable- drives us to terrible
>acts.  Isn't that the case of Butterfly?.

Tragedy can be that, but not inevitably.  Stupidity is the mainspring of
the absurd, not the tragic.  Antony and Cleopatra's tragedy lies almost
completely within themselves, there's nothing much outside.  The same's
true for Coriolanus.

In Puccini, it depends whether you see Butterfly's suicide as terrible.
The effect in the theatre (unlike Oedipus' blinding) is just to make us
cry, or thrill us, as with Tosca's sorry demise.  Belasco's little maid is
a figure of touching, sentimental pathos, no more - and nothing wrong with
that.  Unless of course you're prepared to read the play and opera as the
tragedy of Japan's forced ravishment by the USA - which I for one am not.

>>If it ended with Butterfly falling into Pinkerton's arms, it would be
>>pure through-written operetta (Just as Shakespeare's "Othello" would be
>>a comedy if somebody - anybody - had said something -anything - a scene
>>or two earlier!)
>
>Well, that's what tragedy is about, precisely.

Again, it might be one of the things.  But fair enough, and I certainly
wouldn't try to argue that "Othello" (Or "Otello" was not tragic).

What we cannot say, to wrench a more interesting dialogue back onto topic,
is that operetta excludes the tragic - it doesn't, whether in England,
Spain or France; even if in some cases (especially with the French) we're
reflecting on tragedy from the farcical side of the coin.  Gilbert's Jack
Point is a tragic figure, whether he dies at the end or not.  Zarzuela, of
course, is full of them - I'd put Gimenez's La Tempranica top of the list.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"