The Princess and the Narcissist: Matrimania in Classic Opera

Do you know what we are doing here at the blog Living Single? Mind-altering, consciousness-raising ways of thinking. Challenges to the tired old matrimaniacal sops. I can say that without bragging because today I’m talking about a guest post by Dr. Joan DelFattore. Living Single readers have long appreciated her writings, starting with “Why I’m Single, Then and Now,” on up to “Single with COVID-19: Will You Get the Treatment You Need?”

Here she takes on singlism in the arts, beginning with an awesome quip about Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and then a lengthier take on opera, which I promise will leave you shaking your head, even if you are completely and totally uninterested in opera. This is what a discussion in a really cool Singles Studies course would be like. Enjoy! And thanks, Dr. DelFattore.

The Princess and the Narcissist: Matrimania in Classic Opera

This post was written by Joan DelFattore, Ph.D.

Although I'm now writing about singlism in health care, I used to be an English professor, long before there was any such thing as "singles studies" in the curriculum. In much of the literature I taught, any marriage was considered better than no marriage, especially for women.

Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, for instance, ends with everyone cheering a bully who has starved, ridiculed, and humiliated a woman into mindless submission as his wife. In recent decades, such presentations of domestic abuse as thigh-slapping humor have rightly been recognized as a women's issue. But they also involve matrimania, as the goal of getting everybody married is treated as justification for physical and emotional abuse.

I've been thinking about that in the last few weeks, as the Metropolitan Opera in New York has been streaming operas nightly during the COVID-19 shutdown. By way of background, I was in my 20s before I learned that some people consider opera highbrow. To me, it was just something I grew up with. All four of my grandparents were Italian, and the sound of Enrico Caruso's "Vesti la giubba" was as familiar as the smell of Grandma's spaghetti sauce.

It's only recently, though, that I've noticed what those classic operas actually say. Paradoxically, because they've been familiar for so long, I never paid attention to their depiction of getting married—and not getting married—until the Met started streaming them night after night, one after another.

True, most of them are around 100 years old and sheer fantasy. And yet, as Bella DePaulo has been demonstrating for years, the privileging of marriage that they celebrate remains all too real.

The opera that happened to be on stage at the Met when the pandemic struck makes a great example. It was Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, and of its two possible endings, the Met chose the one that privileges marriage at all costs over a more nuanced alternative. That's not 100 years ago. That's now.

So here's the story. Turandot is a beautiful princess who—get ready for it—does not want to marry. One of her ancestors, another beautiful princess, was what DePaulo calls "single at heart." In the words of the opera, she ruled in silence and joy, confident of her ability to stand on her own. But when a foreign prince invaded the kingdom, she was murdered and, it is implied, raped.

Believing that her ancestor's independent spirit lives within her, Turandot declares that no man will ever possess her.

Well, that wouldn't do. Turandot is hounded into agreeing to wed the first prince who solves three riddles, on the condition that anyone who fails will be beheaded. She's not trying to identify the most worthy suitor. She just wants them to leave her alone.

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Paying no attention to anything she says, several princes come barging in, determined to force her to marry them whether she wants to or not. They fail to solve the riddles and are beheaded.

But does that discourage the "hero" from pursuing her? Of course, it doesn't. His name is Prince Calaf, and at his first sight of Turandot, he's madly aroused by her beauty and seized by a reckless appetite to conquer her. This primitive biological urge is sentimentalized as "love," and she is vilified for not wanting to organize her life around it.

Calaf solves the riddles, but he doesn't just want Turandot as his bride. No matter what she says, he's confident that he can make her want to marry him.

No one in the city knows his name except his father and an enslaved woman, and he's sure that they'll never betray him. So he tells Turandot that if she learns his name by dawn, she can behead him. What he envisions, though, is that she'll melt willingly into his arms.

Turandot frantically orders her subjects to stay up all night and find that name. If they fail, she raves, she'll have them all beheaded.

Granted, threatening to decapitate the entire chorus might reasonably be viewed as an overreaction. But what no one seems to recognize is that even when she resorts to such extremes, the people around her remain maddeningly oblivious to her unambiguous declaration that she does not want to be married. It's as if the moment such words are spoken, they're sucked into a black hole of marriage-obsessed nullity.

This is where Calaf sings the well-known aria "Nessun Dorma" ("No One Is Sleeping"). It recently emerged as a symbol of hope during Italy's COVID-19 crisis, impelled by Luciano Pavarotti's goosebump-raising rendition of the final words—"Vincero! Vincero! Vincero!" ("I will win! I will win! I will win!") The music is breathtakingly beautiful, and taken out of context, it's a soaring affirmation. Within the opera, it's one of the most selfish songs ever written.

Calaf exultantly proclaims that no one will learn his name, ignoring the chorus behind him wailing, "Holy crap! We're all gonna die!" (my translation). The rousing "Vincero!" at the end signals his certainty that he'll conquer Turandot, without regard for what his ploy might cost others.

The enslaved woman, Liu, is dragged in and tortured in Calaf's presence because she knows his name and won't reveal it. Neither does he. Because he once smiled at her, she loves him so much that she dies in order to further his plan to conquer Turandot.

The lament for Liu was the last music Puccini ever finished. He died before completing the opera, and two composers were commissioned to produce two different endings.

Working from Puccini's notes, Franco Alfano provided the expected miraculous turnaround. In what would now be considered a sexual assault, Calaf seizes the protesting Turandot and forces a kiss on her. Instantly, all her resistance melts—just as if it were true that when a woman says no, she really means yes. According to the stage directions, she seems transfigured and almost childlike. Amid soaring music, the chorus rejoices as order is restored with the triumph of "love." This is the ending the Met chose for the current season.

By contrast, Luciano Berio rejected the hearts-and-flowers fantasy that uniting a homicidally resistant woman with a flaming narcissist is somehow going to turn out well. The triumphal note is absent from his ambiguous final scene, and Turandot and Calaf exit to somber music, leaving the audience wondering what will happen next.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that the Met should stop streaming operas or censor them for matrimania. I'm not even suggesting that Alfano's ending should never be performed. But it should not continue to be normalized.

Suppose that instead of marriage, the privileged status were something like whiteness or heterosexuality. Surely, an ending that mindlessly celebrates such prejudice could not be performed without addressing the social issue it raises—or, apparently, even noticing that it raises one. And therein lies the compelling need to keep chipping away at the Noah's Ark view of human happiness that, despite massive evidence to the contrary, remains almost as entrenched today as it was when Turandot was first performed in 1926.

About the Author

Joan DelFattore is a professor emerita at the University of Delaware. She published three books with Yale University Press about freedom of speech and now writes about issues facing unpartnered adults in American health care.