Female Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century Opera: Notes about Norma, La Traviata and Carmen

Abstract

In addition to musical and theatrical importance, the nineteenth-century operas represent a priceless narrative-textual in Western culture which provided, along with the literary and artistic culture of that period, the configuration of gender subjectivities, especially those related to women. The analyzes of Norma, La Traviata and Carmen allows to evaluate the female subjectivities that were represented by their protagonists and how they were related with their desires, affections and with their loving couples. We start from a feminist and gender reading that aims to study the multiple possibilities which women were represented in this art, linking it with the main agencies that became responsible for the production of subjectivities of women in nineteenth century and that are extended nowadays, which are: sexuality, love, marriage and children.