Christopher Webber in response to me:

>>According to your standards "Dido and Aeneas" and "Tosca" would be works
>>with "sad- not tragic- ends".  Isn't the fact that the heroine ritually
>>cuts herself her throat with a dagger enough to declare a work as
>>"tragic"?.
>
>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".  Aristotle (Poetics,
1449b): "a kind of imitation that determine (search), between
commiseration and terror, the middle term in which affects gets the
state of purity" (sorry for the translation).  As far as I know, this
deffinition has been subject to polemics, because there isn't (or wasn't)
a uniform interpretation of what the hell is that famous "state of purity"
(katharsin).  However, this is not of our business.  I guess that we may
take for granted that commiseration (eleos) and terror (phobos), are the
boundaries of the psychological scope of tragedy.  Dido, Tosca, M.
Butterfly etc.  fall perfectly into that scope.  But...  of course, we are
talking again about gender distinctions, and if you don't believe them
concerning opera I don't think you would believe them concerning 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?.  Besides..."derangements" the killing of Scarpia and Tosca's
suicide?.  Oh, Saxons, ask Byron!!!: he knew perfectly what an Italian
girl was consciously capable of...

>>but I hardly can conceive a more cruel and tragic ("heavy", if you want)
>>libretto than "Madame Butterfly".
>
>Cruel indeed.  Personally, I'd call it an extended exercise in exquisitely
>refined sado-masochism rather than a tragedy.

Pinkerton is just an irresponsable, not a sadistic.  He doesn't know
exactly how cruel is what he's doing with Butterfly.  By the other hand,
Butterfly doesn't seems to enjoy anything of this, which would be -I'm
afraid- a sine qua non condition to declare her as a masochist.

>It starts with a comic fugue ripped off from "The Bartered Bride" for
>goodness sake!

Which accents the tragic effect....

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

So was Ophelia...  In fact, Butterfly is cowardly deluded, by a fool
who doesn't know what is he doing actually.  You don't need a dilemma
(like Hamlet's) in order to have a Tragedy.  In fact Oedipus, the tragic
character par excellence, was a good dilemma solver, as the Sphynx knew
very well.  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?.

>Everybody tells her the Pinkerton marriage is a temporary nonsense, and
>her Uncle the Bonze gives her a good telling off for being so stupid as
>to believe in it for one second.

But she believes in it, simply because she's in love.

>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.

Pablo Massa
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