{{Short description|Conventional scene depicting madness in opera}}{{More citations needed|date=November 2022}}{{Distinguish|The Mad Scene}}A '''mad scene''' (French: {{lang|fr|scène de folie}}, Italian: {{lang|it|scena della pazzia}}, or German: {{lang|de|Wahnsinnsszene}}) is a depiction of insanity in opera, theater,<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=McCarren |first=Felicia M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7_GZs9P2HF4C |title=Dance Pathologies: Performance, Poetics, Medicine |date=1998 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-3524-7 |pages=106–107 |language=en}}</ref> or other forms. It may occupy a discrete number, appear or recur in through-composed music, anchor a finale, or constitute the entire work. Mad scenes are often dramatic virtuoso pieces for opera singers, sometimes specific singers.
==History== The mad scene likely first appeared in 17-century Venetian opera with Cavalli's ''La Didone'' and, for male {{lang|lt|inamorato}}, in ''L'Egisto''. In 18th-century Italian opera, especially ''opera seria'' or ''opera semiseria'', examples are found in Handel's ''Orlando'' and, farcically, ''Imeneo''.
In early Romantic music, the convention was popularized in French and especially Italian {{lang|it|bel canto}} opera. Likely modeled on Bellini's ''I puritani'', Donizetti's ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' is the most famous example. Gilbert and Sullivan satirized it via Mad Meg in ''Ruddigore''. As {{lang|it|verismo}} pushed toward artistic realism, composers integrated mad scenes more organically. In Romantic music, Tchaikovsky often deployed them as finales.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} Meanwhile, ballet had its own landmark: Adam's ''Giselle''.<ref name=":0" />
Amid scientific advances in psychiatry, many modernist composers revived and transformed the form in expressionist music, including operas, melodramas, and monodramas. In early 20th-century classical music, Strauss's ''Salome'' and ''Elektra'', Schoenberg's ''Pierrot lunaire'' and ''Erwartung'', and Berg's ''Wozzeck'' and ''Lulu'' depicted madness in new, dissonant idioms. Berg, Stravinsky (''The Rake's Progress''), and Britten (''Peter Grimes'') wrote such scenes for male roles. Britten also wrote a mad scene parody for ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. After ''Pierrot'', Davies' ''Eight Songs for a Mad King'' further extended the form into modernist music theatre.{{cn|date=May 2026}}
Musical theatre more generally drew on the tradition, as in Lloyd Webber's ''Sunset Boulevard'' and Sondheim's ''Sweeney Todd''.{{cn|date=May 2026}} In Porter's ''Kiss Me, Kate'' (written 1947–1948), the act 1 finale ("Kiss Me") parodies Lucia's mad scene as Kate's forced kiss sparks an angry cadenza on "never". When Jarmila Novotná declined the role, Pole created the moment for Lucia star Lily Pons, who also declined.{{sfn|Robbins|2026|loc=89–92}}
==Selected examples==
===Baroque=== Francesco Cavalli *''La Didone'', Act 2 *''L'Egisto'', Act 3 *''Giasone''
Alessandro Stradella *''Il Trespolo tutore''
Jean-Baptiste Lully *''Roland'', Act 4, Scene 5, "Je suis trahi! Ciel!"
George Frideric Handel *''Orlando'', "Ah! stigie larve... Vaghe pupille" *''Hercules'', "Where shall I fly?"
Johann Adolph Hasse *''Artaserse'', "Pallido il sole"
===Classical=== Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart *''Idomeneo'', "D'Oreste, d'Ajace"
Ferdinando Paer *''Agnese''
===Romantic=== Gioachino Rossini *''Ermione'', "Essa corre al trionfo" *''Semiramide'', "Deh! Ti ferma"
Gaetano Donizetti *''Lucia di Lammermoor'', "Il dolce suono... Ardon gl'incensi... Spargi d'amaro pianto", the {{lang|lt|locus classicus}}{{sfn|Albright|2021|loc=150, 165}} *''Linda di Chamounix'', "Linda! Ah che pensato" *''Maria Padilla'' *''Torquato Tasso'' *''Anna Bolena'', "Piangete voi... Al dolce guidami... Coppia iniqua"
Vincenzo Bellini *''I puritani'', "O rendetemi... Qui la voce sua soave... Vien, diletto, e in ciel la luna" *''Il pirata'', "Col sorriso d'innocenza... Oh, Sole! ti vela di tenebra fonda" *''La sonnambula'', "Oh! se una volta sola... Ah! non credea mirarti... Ah! non giunge uman pensiero"
Giuseppe Verdi *''Nabucco'', "Chi mi toglie" *''Macbeth'', "Una macchia" *''Attila'', "Mentre gonfiarsi l'anima"
Richard Wagner *''Die Feen'', Act 3, "Halloh! Halloh! Lasst alle Hunde los!" *''Tristan und Isolde''
Giacomo Meyerbeer *''L'étoile du nord'', Act 3 *''Dinorah'' (originally ''Le Pardon de Ploërmel''), "Ombre légère"
Ferenc Erkel *''Bánk bán'', Act 3, "Tudsz-e madárról éneket?"
Ambroise Thomas *''Hamlet'', "Partagez-vous mes fleurs"
Johannes Brahms *''Ophelia–Lieder'', setting Ophelia's words from the mad scene of Shakespeare's ''Hamlet''<ref>{{cite news |author=<!-- not stated --> |date=23 November 1934 |title=4 UNKNOWN SONGS BY BRAHMS FOUND; Settings to Text in 'Hamlet' for Ophelia Discovered by Dr. Karl Geiringer. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1934/11/23/archives/4-unknown-songs-by-brahms-found-settings-to-text-in-hamlet-for.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=18 May 2026}}</ref>
Modest Mussorgsky *''Boris Godunov'', "Oi! Duschno, Duschno"
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky *''The Oprichnik'', finale *''Mazeppa'', finale *''The Enchantress'', finale
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov *''The Tsar's Bride'', "Ivan Sergeyich, khochesh' v sad poydem"
===Since 1900=== Richard Strauss *''Salome'', finale *''Elektra'', finale
Arnold Schoenberg *''Erwartung'', {{lang|lt|in toto}}{{sfn|Albright|2021|loc=150, 165}}
Max von Schillings *''Mona Lisa'', Act 2, "So! so! Hab' ich dich!"
Alban Berg *''Wozzeck'', Act 1, Scene 2, "Du [Andres], der Platz ist verflucht!"{{efn|"You [Andres], this place is cursed!"}} *''Wozzeck'', Act 3, Scene 4, "Das Messer! Wo ist das Messer?"{{efn|"The knife! Where is the knife?"}} *''Lulu'', Act 2, Scene 1, "Du Kreatur, die mich durch den Strassenkot zum Martertode schleift!" (Dr. Schön's five-strophe aria)
Sergei Prokofiev *''Semyon Kotko''
Benjamin Britten *''Peter Grimes'', "Steady. There you are, nearly home" *''Curlew River''
Igor Stravinsky *''The Rake's Progress''
Francis Poulenc *''Dialogues des Carmélites'' *''La voix humaine''
Hans Werner Henze *''Elegy for Young Lovers''
Peter Maxwell Davies *''Eight Songs for a Mad King''
Leonard Bernstein *''Mass'', XVI. Fraction: "Things get broken"
Dominick Argento *''Miss Havisham's Fire'', finale
John Corigliano *''The Ghosts of Versailles'', "They are always with me"
André Previn *''A Streetcar Named Desire''
===Since 2000=== Daniel Catán *''Salsipuedes: a Tale of Love, War and Anchovies'' (2004), Act 3, Scene 3, "Guzmán, Guzmán, ayúdame" (General García)
==Comparable examples== Francesco Sacrati *''La finta pazza'', Act 2, Scene 10 (Deidamia)
Henry Purcell *"From rosy bow'rs" from ''The Comical History of Don Quixote'', described by Edward Joseph Dent as a "mad song"
Jean-Philippe Rameau *''Platée'', Air de la Folie
Giuseppe Verdi *''La traviata'', "É strano! ... Sempre libera"
Arnold Schoenberg *''Pierrot lunaire''
Giacomo Puccini *''Suor Angelica'', arguably {{lang|lt|in toto}}
Milton Babbitt *''Philomel''{{sfn|Albright|2021|loc=150}}
Luciano Berio *''Sequenza III''
Olga Neuwirth *''Lost Highway'', Scene 5.4, "There's no smoking here"
Michael Finnissy *''Gesualdo: Libro Sesto'', IV. "Quel 'no' crudel"
===Parodies=== Jacques Offenbach * ''Le pont des soupirs'', "Ah! le Doge, ah! Les plombs, le canal Orfano l'Adriatique, c'est fini je suis folle"
Gilbert and Sullivan * ''Ruddigore'', "Cheerily carols the lark" * ''The Grand Duke'', "I have a rival! Frenzy-thrilled, I find you both together!"
Benjamin Britten * ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', the Pyramus and Thisbe scene
Leonard Bernstein * ''Candide'', "Glitter and be gay"
==Notes== {{Notelist}}
==See also== *Female hysteria *Hysteria *Jean-Martin Charcot *Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital *Rage aria
==References== {{Reflist}}
=== Bibliography === *{{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Albright|2021}}|reference=Albright, Daniel. 2021. ''Music's Monisms: Disarticulating Modernism'', fwd. Alexander Rehding. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|978-0-226-79136-4}} (ebk). {{ISBN|978-0-226-79122-7}} (hbk). {{doi|10.7208/chicago/9780226791364.001.0001}}.}} *Anderson, James (1993) ''The Complete Dictionary of Opera & Operetta'', New York *{{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Enrique Arias|1999}}|reference=Arias, Enrique. 1999. "Reflections from a Cracked Mirror: Madness in Music and Theory of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries—An Overview". In ''A Compendium of American Musicology: Essays in Honor of John F. Ohl'', eds. Enrique Arias, Susan M. Filler, William V. Porter, and Jeffrey Wasson, 133–154. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8101-1536-1}} (hbk).}} *Ewen, David (1963) ''Encyclopedia of the Opera'', New York *{{cite book |author-last1=Robbins |author-first1=Hannah Thuraisingam |chapter=Preparing ''Kiss Me, Kate'' for Broadway |title=Too Darn Hot: Kiss Me, Kate & the Making and Remaking of a Broadway Musical |language=en |publication-place=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |publication-date=2026 |doi=10.1093/9780190082437.003.0006 |isbn=978-0-19-008240-6 }} *[http://www.wqxr.org/#!/blogs/operavore/2012/jan/25/top-10-mad-scenes-opera/ The Top 10 Mad Scenes in Opera] WQXR Operavore retrieved 13-08-13 *Любимов, Д.В. Осторожно, сумасшествие! // Оpera musicologica. 2021. Т. 13. № 4. С. 172–178. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26156/OM.2021.13.4.008. *Любимов, Д.В., Кром, А.Е. «Сцена безумия» в опере: проблемы дефиниции // Музыкальный журнал Европейского Севера. 2022. № 2 (30). С. 60–74. URL: http://muznord.ru/images/issue/30/30_Lubimov_Krom.pdf *Любимов, Д.В. Лючия и Марфа: безумные невесты в оперном театре XIX века // Opera musicologica. 2022. Т. 14, № 3. С. 30–45. DOI 10.26156/OM.2022.14.3.002. *Любимов, Д.В. Феномен безумия в европейской опере и его научное осмысление: к проблеме периодизации // Музыкальная академия. 2022. № 4. С. 180–195. DOI: 10.34690/278. *Любимов, Д.В.Лючия и Жизель: безумные героини в музыкальном театре XIX века. DOI 10.24412/2658-7858-2023-33-61-69 // Музыка в системе культуры: Научный вестник Уральской консерватории.–2023.– Вып. 33.– С. 61–69. *Любимов, Д.В. Сюжетный мотив безумия в театральном творчестве А.Е.Варламова // Вестник Саратовской консерватории. Вопросы искусствознания. 2023. №4 (22). С. 65-72. URL: https://sarcons.ru/image/publikacii/vestnik_sgk/%D0%92%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%20%D0%A1%D0%93%D0%9A.2023%20%E2%84%964(22).pdf *Любимов, Д. В. Уберто и Мельник: безумные отцы в оперном театре XIX века // Опера в музыкальном театре: история и современность. Тезисы VI Международной научной конференции, 11–15 марта 2024 г. / ред.-сост. Н.В. Пилипенко, под ред. И.П. Сусидко, Н.В. Пилипенко, А.И. Масловой / Российская академия музыки имени Гнесиных. — М.: Издательство «Российская академия музыки имени Гнесиных», 2024. - С. 120-121. URL: https://gnesin-academy.ru/upload/iblock/8c7/45titr0z13o7jvzvuuwjnvtpr2gm2xcp/AbstractsBook_Conf_Opera_2024.pdf * Любимов Д. В. Сцена безумия Мелинды из оперы Ф. Эркеля «Банк Бан»: преломление европейских и национальных традиций // Музыка в системе культуры: Научный вестник Уральской консерватории.–2024.– Вып. 37.– С. 6–14.
{{Opera topics}}
Category:Opera terminology