From Page to Stage: Sensibility；Sympathy；and the Operatic Heroine in the Long Eighteenth Century

期刊: 《Educational Guide》 DOI:10.64649/yh.eg.issn3078-4794.20260207 全文阅读 返回期刊

Liu Yawen

Hong Kong Baptist University

摘要

This essay examines how eighteenth-century opera transformed female suffering from a private emotional experience into a public and shared performance. Taking Samuel Richardson’s Pamela as a starting point, it traces how the model of the sentimental heroine—defined by modesty, restraint, and emotional endurance—was adapted for the operatic stage in Niccolò Piccinni’s La buona figliuola and further developed in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. The essay argues that opera does not simply represent female suffering, but actively shapes how audiences perceive and respond to it. Through musical elements such as descending melodic lines, suspensions, and restrained vocal expression, as well as through gesture and bodily presence, suffering becomes both visible and audible, inviting sympathy from the audience. At the same time, this sympathy is not neutral. It privileges forms of emotion that are controlled, gentle, and non-threatening, while marginalizing expressions such as anger or resistance. By analysing Pamela, Cecchina, and the Countess, this essay shows that eighteenth-century opera not only reflects the culture of sensibility, but also participates in defining which forms of female emotion are considered morally valuable and socially acceptable.

关键词

sensibility; sympathy; female suffering; eighteenth-century opera; sentimental heroine; Pamela; La buona figliuola; Mozart

参考文献

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[2]Green, Rebecca. Dido ,s Tears: Sentimentalism and the Politics ofOpera. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

[3]Hui, Keri. “Auenbruggers, Sensibility, and the Instrumental Bodies.” Journal of Musicological Research 42, no. 2 (2023): 90–110.

[4]Hui, Keri. “Choreographing Sensibility: Innocence and Politeness in Haydn’s Hob.

[5]XVI: 40 and 42.” Music & Letters 102, no. 4 (2021): 683–709.

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[7]Hunter, Mary. “Pamela: The Offspring of Richardson’s Heroine in Eighteenth-  Century Opera.” In The Culture ofOpera Bufa in Mozart ,s Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment, 137–165. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

[8]Klein, Lawrence E. Shaftesbury and the Culture ofPoliteness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

[9]Rosen, Charles. “Contradictory Sentiments.” In The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, 160–197. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.

[10]Smith, Adam. The Theory ofMoral Sentiments. London, 1759.

[11]Todd, Janet. Sensibility: An Introduction. London: Methuen, 1986.

[12]Waldoff, Jessica. Recognition in Mozart ,s Operas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

[13]Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman. London, 1792.

[14]Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Le nozze di Figaro. Various editions and recordings consulted.

[15]Piccinni, Niccolò . La buona figliuola. Various editions and recordings consulted.


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