Role Playing

This evening I attended a lecture by Dr. Jasmin Bey Cowin entitled “Fallen Female or Femme Fatale?” that had to do with the role of women in literature and more specifically operas. The speaker talked about how traditionally women die in the end of Italian and German operas and literature. Dr. Cowin showed us three operas that support this stereotype: La Traviata, Carmen, and Tosca.
The first opera she talked about, Tosca, is about a young artist Mario Cavaradossi who loves Tosca, an attractive singer and actress. He’s not the only one who loves her however, as Scarpia, the Chief of Police also has fallen in love with Tosca. A man of power, Scarpia tortures Cavaradossi until Tosca reveals his dirty political secrets to save Cavaradossi’s life, as she has fallen for him and wants to be with him. By doing so, she believes she has done the right thing, but in the end the secrets that she revealed cause Cavaradossi to be executed, leaving Tosca alone. With nothing left of her life, she kills herself in shame.
Secondly, Dr. Cowin talked about the opera La Traviata. In this, Violetta, a beautiful, rich young woman gives up the life she knows to find love. She indeed finds love in a man named Alfredo. However, their love was interrupted when Alfredo’s father comes to visit Violetta to tell her that if she marries Alfredo, his sister will have little chance of getting a good arranged marriage, and asks Violetta to leave Alfredo. Violetta agrees and when Alfredo finds out, he throws money that he won in a card game at her feet and calls her a whore in front of a crowd. Violetta is outraged by this and tells him that she no longer loves him. In the end, the father reunites the two and reveals Violetta’s sacrifice to Alfredo. However, Violetta is dying and despite temporary relief from her sickness, she dies in his arms.
The last opera that was talked about was called Carmen after the main character. Carmen was a beautiful gypsy, and enticed a young Spanish soldier with a good family name of Don Jose. After Carmen continuously flirted with the young soldier, he fell deeply in love with her. Unfortunately, Carmen did not feel the same about him and refused to be with him despite his bold decision to break army rules in order to be with her. He doesn’t accept her decision and once he finds out that she has fallen in love with a bullfighter Escamillo, he follows her to Seville and pleads for her to come back. When Carmen refuses to come back with him, he kills her.
The presentation was somewhat hard to comprehend, as the speaker talked with a thick accent and spoke very quickly. Also, even though it was a very thorough and good presentation on the topic, the topic in general was not the most interesting to me. Regardless, she seemed extremely knowledgeable about the subject and made her point very clear and concise. I found it extremely interesting how operas that don’t include a woman dying are usually quite unpopular and regarded as lesser, even in today’s world.
The theme of this lecture was similar to many themes we have encountered in our study of poems thus far; women often have expectations and stereotypes placed upon them, especially by men. Women are often subject to roll playing in the poems we read, whether that role is someone’s love of their life, a sexual partner, or an oddball in that they don’t follow stereotypes.
In today’s society, women are still often stereotyped, but their situation has vastly improved. It is very strange to me how, despite all the steps forward, that operas still have stereotypes for a woman’s role.