Opera Singing and Fictional Truth

JOSÉ Tais toi! Je t'avais dit de ne pas me parler! CARMEN Je ne te parle pas, je chante pour moi même!1 Is Carmen singing? Does she proclaim that which many opera scholars and philosophers are at pains to deny, namely, that opera characters live in a world filled with music and, appropriately, communicate through song? According to Kendall Walton, this question falls under the category of “silly questions,” questions for which, as Gregory Currie elaborates, “we ought not to seek an internal explanation when to do so would require us to elaborate improbable scenarios that distract us from the work's real qualities and purpose, and where there is some evident external explanation.”2 Both Walton and Currie solve this so called silly question by admitting a breakdown of representational correspondence between the medium of the performers' utterances and that of the characters.3 The former is linguistic as well as musical; the latter, solely linguistic. This “solution” accords with the most influential contribution to the study of operatic narratives, Carolyn Abbate's Unsung Voices, in which she presents what I will henceforth refer to as her unheard music thesis: the majority of an opera's music is not part of the ontology of its fictional world. Music is used as a medium to represent nonmusical communicative and expressive acts.4 I wish to reopen the case of opera singing. Certainly the proposition that denizens of opera's fictional worlds communicate through song requires us to imagine a scenario utterly divorced from our workaday reality. And there is an external explanation for this phenomenon: an opera's authors made this artistic choice because they decided to write an opera and not a play. But does the entertainment of this imagining “distract us from the work's real qualities and purpose”? I argue that it does not. This article concerns the ontological status and authorship of the music in opera, refining and expanding the work of Edward T. Cone and Peter Kivy.5 Their proposal that opera characters live in a world fundamentally different from ours, a marvelous place where one's every thought and deed passes to music—and where song rather than speech is the normative mode of communication and expression—has not received the attention it deserves in opera studies.6 My extension of Cone's and Kivy's work offers a more comprehensive examination of the orchestral music, and addresses several neglected phenomena that are important to the study of modern opera. Cone presented the first theory of the nature of operatic utterance in his Ernest Bloch lectures of 1972.7 He proposed that an opera's music is part of the ontology of its fictional world, but the opera's characters are not always conscious of all of the music. They are conscious only of music that they explicitly acknowledge as such. Thus, there are two distinct categories of song: “realistic” songs, such as Cherubino's “Voi che sapete,” which is identified as an instance of music making in the fictional world of Le nozze di Figaro, and “operatic” songs like Cherubino's other aria “Non so più,” which is not so identified.8 This distinction is also central to Abbate's theory, but she renames the categories “phenomenal” and “noumenal.” Cone views the operatic or noumenal music as representing the “composer's voice,” or, to be more precise, the voice of the implied composer.9 Abbate diverges from Cone in her contention that the noumenal music is not part of the ontology of the opera's fictional world.10 This has the serious and undesirable consequence of making it impossible for opera characters to have any form of epistemic access to, or causal powers over, the majority of the music they make. Her theory would seem to bolster the storytelling role of external agents, namely, the work's author(s), but Abbate scrupulously avoids the mention of authors, real or implied. Who is the source of this music? Her answer is alarmingly vague: “to Cone's monologic and controlling ‘composer's voice,' I prefer an aural vision of music animated by multiple decentered voices localized in several invisible bodies.”11 In her discussion of Wagner's leitmotivic foreshadowing in Die Walküre, she invokes a radically effaced, implicit narrator to explain the appearance of the Siegfried motive, which foretells that Siegfried will rescue Brünnhilde—a fact known to none of the characters since Siegfried has yet to be born.12 It is outside the scope of this article to discuss the coherence and usefulness of the concept of the operatic narrator. I simply state my commitment to ontological parsimony, which demands that there be some reason why one should posit the existence of such entities. It is entirely feasible to attribute the instances of external commentary of which Abbate speaks to Richard Wagner, since Die Walküre is a rare example of a single authored opera, and one in which the storytelling “voice” is unmistakably Wagner's own. Cone returned to these operatic metaphysical debates fifteen years later, putting forth a radically different theory of the nature of operatic utterance in “The World of Opera and Its Inhabitants.” This world, he proposed, is filled with music and singing is the normative mode of communication and expression. Characters are not only singers but also composers. They are the authors of the music they sing, as well as its accompaniment, but they do not hear what we hear emitting from the orchestra pit. They “hear” the orchestra that resides in each of their minds.13 Kivy is possibly the only scholar to publicly acknowledge the merits of Cone's second proposal. He further refined Cone's theory by identifying several problems with his argument and proposing solutions to them. Most pertinent to my argument is his reassertion of the importance of Cone's original distinction between “realistic” and “operatic” singing and his rejection of Cone's internally imagined accompaniment thesis, because it prevents characters from having epistemic access to the accompaniments “authored” by their interlocutors.14 Yet, Kivy's confinement of the role of the orchestral music to just those functions it shares with the vocal music—expressing qualities of the cognitive, affective, and psychological states of characters, as well as gesture and bodily movement—leads him to the conclusion that it always has a fictional author.15 As I will demonstrate, a more comprehensive examination of the narrative functions of the orchestral music suggests that character authorship is the exception, not the norm. Kivy is concerned with answering the question: “How are operatic characters ‘saying'?”16 Since I aim to account for all of an opera's music, not merely that which constitutes the utterances of fictional characters, my question is more general: what is fictionally true about the ontological status and authorship of the music in opera? Fictional truths are facts about story content. Explicit fictional truths—for example, it is true in the fiction of Le nozze di Figaro that Cherubino is a lovesick teenage boy—are generally uncontroversial. The contentious cases are implicitly generated fictional truths, such as those with which I am concerned. There have been many attempts to posit the existence of a priori principles governing the generation of fictional truths, such as the reality principle and the mutual belief principle. The ease with which these principles have been refuted time and again in the philosophical literature raises considerable doubt about whether the mechanics of fictional truth generation are explicable through a priori principles of any sort.17 But that does not mean that the rationalization processes we undergo in our determination of a work's fictional content are entirely unsystematic. My conception of fictional truth follows that proposed by Paisley Livingston: fictional truths are those propositions that are appropriate to imagine, given a particular interpretive purpose. If one's aim is to appreciate an opera as a work of art created by real people working in a particular historical artistic context, fictional truths are jointly determined by features of the work itself, and the effective, communicative intentions of the work's real author(s).18 Accepting that authorial intentions are pertinent to interpretation does not entail regarding authors as infallible, nor does it devalue the role of the interpreter. The moderate intentionalist position I support holds that the intentions of a work's author(s) figure in the determination of the work's fictional content and meaning, but are neither necessary nor sufficient to determine either. An author's intention to endow her work with a given property does not entail that it actually possesses that property, since authors are not always successful in realizing their intentions. Conversely, the fact that a work possesses a given property does not mean that the to that property to her I the as opera fictional Fictional content be determined a case by case Thus, I that all are by more fictional truths generated in are merely that be the majority of of this but do not necessary or sufficient for an opera's music is an part of the ontology of its fictional world. worlds radically different than that of our world, but this is a As with to are to epistemic from their of and in their determination of a fictional opera, this is simply the rather than the song is the normative mode of communication and in the fictional world. There are some such as characters do with for example, the in Die And some characters entirely through gesture or such as the and in de and in in is not but does not the characters are the authors of their utterances in the fictional world. If an opera's music is not part of the ontology of its fictional world, it is impossible to attribute its authorship to fictional Cone has this that it is to imagine that a of a utterance is in from the and of the character I that it is not merely but to attribute the authorship of a explicitly made utterance to but that This is true in the case of a utterance that the character have to case is that of an utterance for which the and linguistic one and where it is not to that the character this one do for or In this one attribute the to the work's author(s), it to the character in question as or for The character is the fictional of his the fact that some of its features not by the it is true that all of songs are of it is not always fictionally true that instances of singing are artistic Accepting that the majority of opera characters through song does not entail regarding all such as artistic in the fictional world of an opera. I Abbate's and noumenal since it a ontological distinction between these two categories of I in making a distinction between that are artistic in the world of the fiction and that do not of of Explicit features of many operatic with the that be from these features about authorial that this distinction is to the of opera. one a in the in which characters to artistic for example, by the merits of these as do the characters in Die the song there is always a in If the opera is in the a a that song as does in the in it is an opera, the write in an as in in Die There are some in which the distinction between artistic and is more The utterances of characters, such as and because it to represent such characters as having an artistic through music or Cone in this as part of his to the distinction between “realistic” and “operatic” but he in the to a single opera to the as a the fact that the utterances of Carmen and those of and do not artistic about these characters and the importance of the distinction between artistic and the orchestral music is also part of the ontology of the fictional world, it does not have a fictional Kivy's proposal that the orchestral music always be to a fictional is to explain the of accompaniments to orchestral music not and leitmotivic The proposition that characters their accompaniments suggests that the normative in would be for the accompaniment to with each of examination of from any in opera will that this is not the In an to explain this in a that accords with Kivy's one argue that the accompaniment of the states of is the of the in many internal in and opera for example, in the I of di at of the has just The characters are and so so that their and has to a They have different and to the most of but they are in at one of their state of at this Who is for that the most the characters is and the music to this I will my answer to these questions I have each of the The of music to or is the of Kivy's proposal. in his discussion of the in Peter that this music is a of the of the of those with his In other it is authored by the fictional I support Cone's that the in which the of the are music is in a with the of the these I with Cone's explanation of this since it raises the question of this state of to the and of in the of their that fictional for example, that Siegfried will the to The to an external to the fictional world is in this as well as in those cases since fictional the necessary causal powers the orchestral music. have fictional but this should not us the of the the music of the is merely like the it of Peter the other that of the fictional authorship of the orchestral music the questions I under the category of silly questions and the for these phenomena fictionally such an argument is our only in making of a given but I its There be a and sufficient reason why we should imagine propositions silly In the case of opera there is through song is what opera characters to and this in our and of the their a and sufficient reason to that opera characters music for which they do not to be and in fact the and causal to determine all of its It is more appropriate to that the orchestral music does not have a fictional in cases where one is explicitly or example, in a of Le nozze di Figaro that the the role of to a like in “Voi che sapete,” it is fictionally true that is the source of the accompaniment, of the orchestra are the source of this music, a and different from that which would be from the in the implicit case is Abbate's argument that is the of the orchestral music that the story he to in Die Walküre, It is that to attribute the orchestral music in this so raises the question of possesses this does not entail in opera's fictional all Die Walküre the appearance of the Siegfried at the opera's conclusion and what it there is generated by the characters to hear this music. Abbate interpretive the not not and to states are in her of and I that all opera characters with aural hear the music. merely possesses interpretive than I of interpretive as a from to the in characters sufficient in they have This is for denizens of operatic as the case of in In his of to the character when he him the opera character that is not in the he is to the of the In the to his when his to he does not is that the are none other than and each to write the and the of to him that they are but to the linguistic of their utterances neither nor The music does that the are not by to the by and to of and The of this the fact that all of the characters hear the music, is the only one the interpretive to the that a him is Abbate's unheard music is the that it is to the linguistic and of utterances and different ontological The is that song is the of and music. An account of the and of such an utterance only from the of This is a in opera to be more is my that it is true for opera characters epistemic access to the of the utterances they and their to these utterances and the to explain they the that to in the that they an opera, they many important about the opera's characters the of linguistic utterances each Is it not appropriate to imagine that the characters undergo a of each which their about is or It is a of opera that and or do not in since their voice The is in which the of and and and and and But there is in the music and of to that the do not each or their as well as they the the their solely their of the of the two and the characters like The of the voices is not the only in the one in an opera, is only the by which opera characters epistemic access to their world. The of Le nozze di Figaro to this since it place in an at and and the are as each The with which characters form about each their not merely to hear but to to what they are The rationalization processes characters to us this The with such as is the I his The to the of the is their of as They the and but when with Figaro, she to her and he through her In for her her a and him he to his he her to be the the and her with her he che my the voice that I Figaro it her voice that her and he and this important to The of in opera it a of of the importance of to the well opera but my contention this Abbate the evident in the in Die Walküre, which a be or As she and each not through a but by an of as me to the I its as a But I it when the of my voice to me in the The of characters is important to the of modern like through and the for which making the most of his It is utterances that him to the people and his more than his the music as a of the with which the characters in but given that the story of is a for the of the modern and I it more to the characters as through music and the merits of their music. narrative theory has given real authors fictional But the of the voices of an opera's authors is I to the study of modern opera, since external are to the and of the real to the of many of the features of his are and to none more so than his and of in In his a that from by commentary the the he the with to the of the there in his They him to his And a and world received the of his music presents a different of It is not merely at the of the to with his as an of the of the and the which only be in and through music. in his his to the thought in by the with with in a a by a single of each of these The opera's of of and its of his and of his as an in concerned that his the and as a to there is to posit an implied or, as in in there is such in the case of would merely endow this with the of as the and so would only what to with his to authorial voices also the are always authored in a this is with and in many instances from an that accords the the so to this to commentary the work of his by or their intentions. in is in this In the opera, to be an an that with the The opera is by of and it is that the to not only but a the questions he at the opera's in its conclusion and he that his in music these by to support to vocal or that would with the by example, when the falls an which is to the of this The of that is and, the orchestra does not from this is to to his vocal the of that the at the of a work about a of it does not in this case because of the nature of this it suggests that is in a of the and to in the of his music, not only his about but in his of the of he also his of the views the the story they my I to have some of the merits of the of operatic I but I that are for me to what the of my music fictionally This addresses this According to a moderate intentionalist account of fictional one the features of the work and the effective, communicative intentions of its The proposition that opera characters communicate through song and hear the music they and their is by features of operatic through music, by it or by to it through or They that they hear not only the music they but also the music of their the an opera as a narrative about its fictional world. Most the imagine that the he represent characters in the fictional world. should the doubt that the characters are in the and the as the I that there is reason to doubt the proposition that a given opera's characters communicate through song and hear the music they and a given opera's author(s) that this proposition is not fictionally true it with more fictional or there is a and sufficient reason to that the opera in with a that that this proposition does not I of a single example of an opera's authors their work that the music is not it does not that this would be In one example of a in a particular that my is and of for the de In Le is about the of the from he has a and explicitly states that the of is to be the character to his that the have and this The orchestra that the does not the of Le that he to be there is reason for him to since he is to He he because it accords with his of the of the and about the of and their of and the of the of these It is true in the fiction of their of that Le he is music than we this constitutes an example of localized to Le at this particular Le aural is not a fictional truth of the work as by its as this from the in the work's The proposition that the majority of an opera's music is unheard in its fictional world is not by features of operatic in such as the just Thus, of this position the existence of the in This is the Abbate when she states that her unheard music constitutes a in and a about the existence of a the of falls to the to for its existence and the of opera and opera such argument has been by Abbate or to my for the reason that the unheard music does not an operatic The of I is of for in a of a given of people our authors and of that is a to a a in which the people in this a where the of this the of the other people in the authors, the of a work of art is to have it be by in some for the is to appreciate the work in the author's It should be that the does not all of opera and since the that the of all is not always As not by by what a is it is not merely any one in a given only to the but that the to and this belief is what a and reason to to Thus, in to identifying a one that the appropriate and of authors and to the authors their with this Abbate has not that the of and at any in and of opera, in the of and to and appreciate opera in the she In Abbate's I am not that the my singing thesis, an operatic The fictional truths I in are merely features the majority of operatic The fact that these are so by opera scholars that my propositions do not the demands of belief in the music to a more of operatic and for the of interpretive by opera that fictional authorship of the orchestral music is a the storytelling of opera the of which is important to the study of modern opera. opera as and fictional worlds are in that they and characters with of communication and expression. But opera is only one to it its It is time that those of us in opera opera's metaphysical and to our of its fictional worlds and their to the of our

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