For the summer, I thought it would be fun to do a post that’s a little less word-y and a little more visual in nature. Something that makes you think, but at the same time kind of just gives you a good laugh. What better way to do that then to talk about… death. Specifically, death in opera.
There’s so much death in opera. Death is practically what opera is known for. Therefore, I became more interested in it. Specifically, I became more interested in how characters die in opera. When thinking about it, it occurred to me that I could only think of a handful of ways characters usually die in opera. The first graph demonstrates the general categories of death I found (so far).
Image 1: How Characters Die in Opera. Characters die in more specific ways than this. However, the trend seems to be that most deaths fall into three categories, with a few outliers.
It turns out, I was right. Generally speaking, death in opera is not particularly varied. It sort of makes sense when you think about it: deaths are there for the storytelling, and dying of a heart attack is not the most captivating death around.
So then I got curious about the breakdown of these three categories. How, specifically, are characters murdered? How do they commit suicide? What kind of illnesses do they contract? Surely these subcategories must be more varied! Let’s try murder first.
Image 2: Ways Characters are Murdered in Opera. Turns out, murders in opera are not particularly inspired.
Well, that’s disappointing. From my extremely informal research (which I’ll explain further at the end of this post), it seems that the vast majority of characters die from being stabbed by a dagger or from a sword in a duel. Either way, the weapon of choice in opera is clearly a blade. Though, to be fair, considering the weaponry and technology from the past three-hundred years, this kind of makes sense. I guess I thought there would be more poisonings somehow though.
Image 3: Ways Characters Commit Suicide in Opera. A little more varied, but stabbing still takes the lead.
Hey, there’s a little more poison! Suicide turned out to be the most varied category, but it still maintained a disproportionate amount of stabbing. I’m kind of surprised that drowning turned out to be relatively prominent, though it should be noted that one of those deaths was actually jumping into a body of water and drowning, so it turned out to be a two-parter that I just needed to choose.
Alright, I saved the illnesses for last because this whole list was inspired by the idea: I wonder how popular it really is for characters to die from tuberculosis, or TB, in opera. Does it really account for as many deaths as I think it does?
Image 4: Illnesses Characters Contract in Opera. Turns out, tuberculosis, or TB, is really as popular a form of death in opera as everyone thinks it is.
Turns out, the answer to my question is a resounding yup! TB really is the most popular non-murder or suicide form of death there is. Fancy that! It would be an interesting follow-up to discover if that’s because TB was really that popular back in the day, or if the disease has some sort of magical allure over composers and librettists alike. Furthermore, I found it very fascinating that those who did not die from TB instead died from things that you can’t actually die from. Therefore, I found them very questionable in nature, but left them as they were because sometimes in opera, you just have to roll with it.
So there it is: death in opera. It should be noted here that I compiled a list of opera deaths myself using this link, this link, and Wikipedia. I recognize it is not a complete list, especially when it comes to the more modern operas. However, it took a surprising amount of time to confirm each type of death, especially when there’s no Wiki page to just tell me (but perhaps I should create one), and I felt like 42 operas was a good start.