The Musical-Dramatic Synthesis of Music and Text — Character Development in Igor Stravinsky’s Opera-Oratorio Oedipus Rex
Abstract
Igor Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex is the best-known musical composition based on Sophocles’ eponymous tragedy. A striking feature of it is the way in which the author managed to bring to life the personalities of the characters from the tragedy, through a specific treatment of the Latin text as well as his own music “commentary”. The present analysis of individual characters will view music and text as two entities working together in synthesis. The paper will deal separately with the heroes of the tragedy and the nature of their dramatic characterization, with the ultimate goal of solving the issue of the relationship between the hero of classical antiquity and the modern man. We aim to prove that these two distant entities form a unity, just as there exists an apparent unity between what characters say on the stage and the commentary added by the composer. This way we conclude that the characters inner desires and the story itself also form a unified whole.
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