Opera and Sacrifice
Like tragedy, opera’s origin in the sixteenth century goes back to cults of sacrifice (Nietzsche, Macho). This is still true and structurally decisive for the Italian opera of the nineteenth century. Germont explicitly demands a »sacrificio« from Violetta and calls her »sublime vittima« in the great death scene. In Verdi, as in Puccini and Mascagni, we find a sacrificial competition, whose differentiating moments have yet to be analyzed and assessed. Unsurprisingly, Gender Studies and Postcolonial Studies have condemned opera’s misogyny, racism, imperialism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and homophobia. In view of my project here, the gender, political, and postcolonial approaches attest to an acute sacrificial crisis, which is to be addressed in a new paradigmatic key.
Nineteenth-century operas work on, and with, a re-investment of Christ’s sacrifice. This transposition aims toward a new sacrifice of love. But in failing it may result in a perversion of the Eucharist, a black mass. And it may also end up as a relapse into classical-oriental models of sacrifice.
Barbara Vinken has been Professor and Chair of French and Comparative Literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (Germany) since 2004. After receiving her doctoral degree in 1989 at the University of Constance and her Ph.D. in 1991 at Yale University, she habilitated in 1996 at the University of Jena. Before assuming the chair at the LMU, she held professorships for Romance Studies in Hamburg and Zurich. She has been a visiting lecturer at New York University (most recently in 2012), the Humboldt University Berlin, the EHESS Paris, the Université Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the Free University Berlin, and at the Center for Literature and Cultural Studies in Berlin (ZfL), the Venice International University (VIU), and the University of Chicago (Franke Institute for the Humanities, Center for Disciplinary Innovation, 2012). Barbara Vinken has published in Die Zeit, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Harper’s Bazaar, and Philosophie Magazin. She is also a panelist on 3sat’s Buchzeit.
