The term “narrative prosthesis” refers to the tendency for works of literature to use disability as the conflict upon which the whole narrative hinges. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a quintessential example of “narrative prosthesis.”
Folks who have never attended a full-length, uncut Giacomo Meyerbeer grand opera have been known to pout and ponder: Why did the most popular opera composer of the mid-nineteenth century all but vanish from the stages of the world after a hundred years?
Sunday’s matinee at Lyric Opera of Chicago was my first experience of Heggie and McNally’s 2000 opera Dead Man Walking. It certainly won’t be my last.
There comes a time where everything falls into place, and more importantly, when your head and heart are also in the right mindset. That’s when when the opera becomes cathartic, life-changing experience.
Hopefully the assignment of Herman Melville’s endless whaling opus Moby-Dick as compulsory reading for High School students is a thing of the past.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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