La strage delle donne nell'opera: complicità e denuncia della rappresentazione

The massacre of women, always present in the opera from its origin, is especially spread in the nineteenth century and has its popular specimen in La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi; it doesn’t disappear in the musical theatre of the twentieth century which indeed started with the death on stage of a female figure, mysterious and unconventional, the Mélisande by Maetherlimk and Debussy, killed by the common destiny for all women. Purpose of this paper is to show how the music in the theatre plays a different role which depends on different compositional modes in similar dramatic events and so it is able to give different sense to similar episodes of violence against women. Transgressive linguistic choices, detachment from conventional forms and structures, new relations between notes, new vocal and instrumental timbres release the music from its moving and involving qualities and give to it a vivid role in denouncing the aberrations produced by social conventions and in revealing to the spectator his collusion.