In opera, a mad scene is an enactment of insanity in an opera or play. It was a popular convention of Italian and French opera in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
Mad scenes were often created as a way to offer star singers a chance to show off their abilities, though many of them are also very dramatic. The vocal writing is often exciting and highly demanding, requiring immense skill. Most mad scenes were composed for the soprano voice, but there are examples for the baritone and the tenor.
They are most popularly associated with works of the bel canto period, though examples may also be found in earlier works, such as George Frederick Handel's Orlando and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Idomeneo. Almost all mad scenes were composed for either opere serie or opere semiserie; Gaetano Donizetti was probably the most famous exponent of the form.
The convention of writing mad scenes largely died out after the bel canto era, as composers sought to inject more realism into their operas. More recently, some composers have returned to the form for dramatic effect, most notably Benjamin Britten in the final act of Peter Grimes.
Similar mad scene techniques have also appeared in ballets, such as Giselle.
The modern musical theatre has also been influenced by the operatic mad scene, as evidenced in Sweeney Todd and Sunset Boulevard.
Read more about Mad Scene: Famous Examples, Parodies
Famous quotes containing the words mad and/or scene:
“Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally—a love—it is safer, too, to show that we’re mad when we’re mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“An age is the reversal of an age:
When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,
We lived like men that watch a painted stage.
What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:
It had not touched our lives.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)