Musicology Commons^™

“A Flower Which Blossoms And Fades”: Depictions Of Tuberculosis In 19th-Century Opera, Daniel Goldberg

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The romantic period in art and music is a time that focused on the regular person and had a fascination with nature, emotion, and death. One of the most common themes used was disease. One of the more common diseases of the time in both opera and real life was tuberculosis. In opera tuberculosis is always brought upon the same type of person time and time again and is always shown both by the character, and also though a series of metaphors. This character is always a woman and these “tubercular heroines” always are young, beautiful, frail people who need …