#000474
Opera & Its Symbols: The Unity of Words, Music, & Staging
Robert Donington
A serious argument for how opera means, from the musicologist who brought a Jungian eye to Wagner. Robert Donington holds that opera is a totality — text, music, and staging carrying symbolic meaning together — and that honest production serves that unity rather than a director's imposed concept. Taking Carlyle's line that people live by symbols, he reads scenes and characters from Monteverdi to the twentieth century, weaving close musical analysis with myth and depth psychology. Read it as informed criticism and a theory of staging, not a plot guide; its Jungian frame is a lens rather than a proof, and skeptics of psychoanalytic reading can take it with salt. But Donington's scholarship runs deep, and the book rewards anyone wondering why opera moves us and how it ought to be staged.
more…less ▴
The author
Robert Donington (1907–1990) was an English musicologist, viol player and writer whose The Interpretation of Early Music became a standard reference, and whose Wagner's "Ring" and Its Symbols applied a Jungian, symbol-reading approach to opera. Opera and Its Symbols extends that method across the wider repertoire.
The book
Donington argues that opera is a totality in which text, music and staging together carry symbolic meaning, and that faithful production means serving that unity rather than a director's overlay. Taking Carlyle's premise that people live by symbols, he interprets scenes and characters from Monteverdi through the twentieth century, weaving musical analysis with myth and depth psychology.
How to read it
Read it as informed criticism and a theory of production, not a plot guide. Its Jungian framework is a lens, not a proof, and readers skeptical of psychoanalytic reading may take it with salt; but Donington's musical scholarship is deep, and the book rewards anyone thinking about why opera moves us and how it should be staged.
For more context
It pairs naturally with Donington's own Wagner's "Ring" and Its Symbols for a fuller sense of his approach.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Robert Donington
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Music
- Location
- Colorado