This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Mad scene" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR(November 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Not to be confused with The Mad Scene.
A mad scene is an enactment of insanity in an opera, play,[1] or the like. It may be well contained in a number, appear during or recur throughout a more through-composed work, be deployed in a finale, form the underlying basis of the work, or constitute the entire work. They are often very dramatic, representing virtuoso pieces for singers. Some were written for specific singer, usually of a soprano Fach.
Many notable examples were composed for either opere serie or semiserie, as in those of Georg Frideric Handel.
They were a popular convention of French and especially Italian opera in the early 19th century, becoming a bel canto staple. Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is the most famous example. As composers sought more realism (verismo), they adapted the convention and better integrated the scene into the opera.
With the rise of psychology (and advances in psychiatry), modernist composers revived and transformed the mad scene in expressionist operas and similar genres (e.g., melodramas, monodramas). Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg depicted madness in new and dissonant idioms in the early 1900s. Berg and Britten wrote mad scenes for male roles.
The modern musical theatre was also influenced by the operatic mad scene, as in Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard or Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.
Some ballets contain similar scenes, most notably Adam's Giselle.[1]
^ abMcCarren, Felicia M. (1998). Dance Pathologies: Performance, Poetics, Medicine. Stanford University Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-8047-3524-7.
A madscene is an enactment of insanity in an opera, play, or the like. It may be well contained in a number, appear during or recur throughout a more...
substituted for solo flute in Lucia's madscene, per Donizetti's original score. Time: 17th century Place: Scotland Scene 1: The gardens of Lammermoor Castle...
Mad Max 2 (released as The Road Warrior in the United States) is a 1981 Australian post-apocalyptic dystopian action film directed by George Miller, who...
began in 1979 with Mad Max, and was followed by three sequels: Mad Max 2 (1981; released in the United States as The Road Warrior), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome...
Kilgour co-founded the band The MadScene in the early 1990s with guitarist and bassist Lisa Siegel. The MadScene released an EP Falling Over, Spilling...
theater, and just as the Ophelia of the evening was to enter for her madscene, "sprang forward in her place ... with wild eyes and wavering motion."...
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, commonly known as Mad Max 3, is a 1985 Australian post-apocalyptic dystopian action film directed by George Miller and George...
Nickelodeon GUTS featured a recurring event called "Mad Max", inspired by the movie series' chase scenes. Competitors had to steer a recumbent tricycle around...
Mad Men is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on cable network AMC from...
explained. "He's somewhere on my great-great-grandmother's side! "My madscene: An ex-Hamlet's strange journey into musicals". Evening Standard. 30 September...
episodes of Mad, an animated sketch comedy television series inspired by Mad magazine that aired on Cartoon Network. "iTunes – TV Shows – Mad, Season 1"...
After the chorus's ode of foreboding, time is suspended in Cassandra's "madscene".: p. 11–16 She has been onstage, silent and ignored. Her madness that...
that the scene of Berthe's narrative was filled with "quite new" harmonic modulations. He praised other moments in Act I (especially the madscene), and...
ed aria taken from Act III scene 2, Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti. It is also commonly known as the "madscene" sung by the leading soprano...
d'Assise (1983) has also attracted widespread attention. Stay, Prince and hear Scene from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. The witches' messenger, in the form of Mercury...
"Mad World" is a 1982 song by British band Tears for Fears. Written by Roland Orzabal and sung by bassist Curt Smith, it was the band's third single release...
having acquired kingship in numerous countries. After the witches perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to...
expressing rage Cavatina – Musical term Intermezzo – Opera genre Madscene – Conventional scene depicting madness in opera Recitative – Ordinary speech-like...
a white burial shroud, fell out of the flimsy wooden coffin, and in a madscene people in the crowd reached to touch the shroud. The soldiers pushed and...
Mad God is a 2021 American stop-motion adult animated experimental horror film written, produced, and directed by Phil Tippett. Completed in 2021, it...
unusual accompaniment of six cellos, and the baritone Nabucco in his madscene and other passages, are given music of great expressiveness, providing...
Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor: "Il dolce suono", the madscene of Act III, Scene 2. It is one of the few pieces of music in the film that is diegetic...
Mad TV (stylized as MADtv) is an American sketch comedy television series created by David Salzman, Fax Bahr, and Adam Small. Loosely based on the humor...
Global Information