The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [289]
Over the next half-century, however, all this was to change. As the age of Romanticism arrived in earnest, and storytelling became increasingly engulfed in the kind of sentimentalism foreshadowed by Young Werther, this was particularly reflected in two ways. The first was that, for the first time in the history of storytelling, it became fashionable for stories to have dark, tragic endings without any redeeming sense that the forces of life had triumphed. The other was the number of stories which ended in the violent death of an innocent heroine. We are here firmly into the pattern first heralded by Richardson's Clarissa as early as 1748. We see how, in the heyday of Romanticism, storytelling became conspicuously dominated by the haunting figure of `the persecuted maiden': the poor, misunderstood, cruelly mistreated anima. And nowhere was this more vividly expressed than through that form of storytelling in which the nineteenth-century imagination was so notably prolific: the opera.
In general, one of the more marked changes which came over opera as it moved into the age of Romanticism was the way in which, in all senses, it darkened. The predominant form in late-eighteenth-century opera had been comedy. Now it became tragedy. The balance swung from the happy endings and brilliantly lit daylight scenes so often associated with Mozart or Rossini (of course there were exceptions) to the gloomy stages, night scenes and catastrophic endings we associate with Verdi or Wagner. We pass from the sunlit blue skies under which the heroines wish their boyfriends calm seas and a tranquil voyage in Cosi Fan Tutte to the rocky midnight gorge where we see `the tempestuous, eerie and headlong "Ride to Hell"' in the Damnation of Faust, or the world-ending apocalypse of Gotterdammerung. We move musically from the clear, open, uncomplicated harmonies of the classical age to the swirling, hectic, heart-tugging emotionalism and complex chromaticism of the great Romantics. But just as revealing as any of this was the startling change which came over their operas' plots.
One of the first notable tragic operas to centre on the plight of `the persecuted maiden' was Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), loosely based on a novel by that leading Romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott. But when we look at its plot we see something very significant has happened. It is not like that of a conventional Tragedy at all. With its stratagems, confusions and misunderstandings, it is much more like the plot of Comedy: but comedy which has gone hideously and tragically wrong.
The heroine's brother Lord Enrico is at once established as the central dark figure. Not only has he wrongfully usurped the estates of the light hero, Edgardo, with whose family his own has a long-standing feud; he is also under suspicion of treason against the king. He conceives as the only hope of reviving his fortunes a scheme to marry his sister Lucia to another powerful lord, Arturo. But Lucia has already established a secret love with Edgardo, with whom she exchanges rings and vows of eternal fidelity. When Edgardo leaves for France, Enrico forges a letter to make her think Edgardo has fallen in love with someone else. Devastated by this, and to save her brother from death for treason, Lucia nobly agrees to marry Arturo. The wedding ceremony takes place. But no sooner has Lucia signed the marriage contract, than Edgardo bursts in to protest, crying for vengeance. In despair at her brother's treachery, Lucia hands back her ring to Edgardo, who flings it down, cursing all her family, and storms out. Not long afterwards, while the wedding celebrations are still continuing, word comes from off-stage that Lucia has lost her reason and killed her husband. She then enters for