Dr. Samuel Johnson said that opera is the most irrational of all the arts. The human voice is forced to do things it is not designed to do. It is odd. At the same time, using song to make dramatic statements is powerful. Nothing like it. No other art form can do this: the human voice in song is joined with musical instruments to make an emotional point. Aside from the given difference between the theatrical stage and the operatic stage, the key difference in Shakespeare’s Othello and Verdi’s Otello is the belief in Original Sin. Shakespeare’s characters are complex because it tells of eternal truths. Othello is a courageous man who falls from grace; Desdemona is a virtuous woman who makes errors of judgment, yet remains virtuous. Iago is a likeable fellow who has pure evil in his heart. All these characters have the capacity for good and evil. They have a choice, a free will. Otello on the other hand reflects nineteenth century romanticism. It is emotional, sentimental. The contrasts are bigger. Good is white, evil is black. Nature itself is corrupt, thus we are corrupt. A post-Darwinist view of man and the world.
Notes From Underground is a new type of literature. It defines Dostoyevsky as a modern author. There is no hero of gigantic stature. Our narrator is an antihero, loaded with contradictions. It is difficult to get a sense of what is going on. The story is a narrative; first in the present and then back to the past. In retrospect, the book is an understanding of why Russia was coming apart. It is a vision of a society having a nervous breakdown. Just as an individual can break down, so can a society. This novel began as a parody of another novel What is to be Done that is loaded with all the pet theories of the day. This was the book to read if you wanted to be a revolutionary. Lenin loved this book. Dostoyevsky was appalled at the direction his country was heading. The three principles in vogue: First, a complete and total reliance on reason. Reason alone can solve all problems. Second, absolute determinism. Everything is determined scientifically. Third, determinism will produce a happy society. When the censors edited the book, they left the rantings of the main character; bur removed all references to Christ and the role of suffering.
Opera as an art form is a relative newcomer, making its first appearance at the end of the sixteenth century. Its origins were an attempt to revive Greek theater. The ancient manuscripts were readily available, but there was no record of the music. All Greek plays were sung. Thus the effort began to take classical stories and set them to music. Opera is a sung play. By the early 1600’s, opera had spread throughout Europe. Extremely popular. Because of the cost of these productions, only the wealthy could afford the ticket price and opera became upper class entertainment. The real explosion of opera occurred in the nineteenth century with a string of talented composers, Wagner and Verdi in particular. The German influence in opera colored the Italian form and compelled Verdi to come out of retirement, team up with librettist Boito, and put Otello on stage in Milan in February 1887. It was an immediate success. Opera appeals to the senses, to the emotions. Everything in opera is seeking an emotional response. Verdi’s Otello is a romantic story instead of the dark tragedy by Shakespeare. For example, Desdemona is an entirely different woman in both versions, trickster verses innocent victim.
Dr. White uses Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago to illustrate his points on King Lear, particularly in Lear’s speech calling to “allow not nature more than nature needs,” where he discusses how very little one technically needs in order to survive. The whole celebrated sequence where Lear is out in the storm is carefully examined. Lear’s fast-changing moods are noted as he goes from towering rage and futile commands to the sky to self-pity to cries for patience to bear his sufferings. Dr. White then speaks of the significance of Edgar’s progression of disguises, Edmund’s piteous desire for love, and finally, how Lear and the other sufferers in the play were actually blessed by their suffering.
Dr. White explains the connection between language and personality, and shows Shakespeare’s mastery of this in the realness of his characters. He examines the significance of Shakespeare’s position between the medieval and modern worlds, and the dislike of his largely medieval worldview by modernists, who try to undermine his work by removing it from classrooms and ruining the language by translations. Edmund’s soliloquy in Act I is analyzed, showing his practically modernistic point of view in his twisting of the truth, lack of logic, and appallingly egocentric viewpoint. Next, Dr. White examines the characters’ various uses of the word “nature,” which is constantly redefined throughout the play. He looks at Edmund’s lack of personality and traces it to his bland, over-comfortable
Dr. White continues his discussion of Cordelia and Kent’s loyalty as the cause of their disobedience and shows that, since they love the king, they must sacrifice, for love and sacrifice are one. He then discusses the setting of King Lear in pre-Christian Britain, showing that it was purposely done to circumvent trouble with the government – but that nevertheless it is filled with beautifully Christian iconography, presented subtly but meaningfully. Dr. White speaks of the expectations that audiences would have had for the play, and how it would have shocked them by its tragic ending. Finally, he reaches the scene where Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, covering the symbolism of Lear’s line of inverted iambic pentameter and the way in which the scene is a kind of vision of the Pieta, but with father and daughter in place of mother and Son.
