This dissertation examines three representative operas by Giuseppe Verdi—Macbeth, Rigoletto, and La Traviata—to explore how literary works are transformed into operatic art through musical reinterpretation. Adopting an interdisciplinary methodolog...
This dissertation examines three representative operas by Giuseppe Verdi—Macbeth, Rigoletto, and La Traviata—to explore how literary works are transformed into operatic art through musical reinterpretation. Adopting an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates literary analysis, musical structure, and dramaturgical aesthetics, this study investigates how narrative structure, psychological depth, and symbolic systems in literature are re-created through Verdi’s musical language. As one of the nineteenth century’s most literarily conscious composers, Verdi did not merely adapt literary sources but reinterpreted their emotional and philosophical essence within his music, achieving a profound synthesis between literature and sound.
Chapter I serves as the introduction, outlining the research background, objectives, and scholarly significance. It argues that Verdi’s operatic adaptations are not reproductions of literary texts but processes of artistic reconstruction. A review of previous studies shows that most scholarship focuses on Verdi’s musical style or character portrayal, with limited attention to how literary structures are transformed into musical ones. Consequently, this study establishes the central proposition of “the musicalization of literary emotional structures” and proposes a three-layered analytical framework encompassing text, music, and drama.
Chapter II analyzes Verdi’s strategies of adaptation, identifying three primary methods: historical modification, character simplification, and musicalization of narrative rhythm. Through case studies of Macbeth, Rigoletto, and La Traviata, the chapter reveals how Verdi blurred specific historical settings to evade censorship, concentrated psychological conflict by reducing secondary characters, and reconstructed narrative pacing through musical climaxes and tonal contrast. For example, in Rigoletto, political satire is replaced by a universal human tragedy; in Macbeth, subsidiary figures are omitted to emphasize ambition and guilt; and in La Traviata, rhythmic and tonal oppositions embody both realism and transcendence.
Chapter III focuses on the musical analysis of Verdi’s arias, interpreting the aria as a transformation of the literary “inner monologue” into a musical soliloquy. Through tonal contrast, rhythmic tension, melodic contour, orchestral color, and text–music correspondence, Verdi gives psychological states an audible, temporal form. Lady Macbeth’s “Vieni! t’affretta!” expresses violent ambition; “Caro nome” and “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata” from Rigolettocontrast innocence and rage; while “È strano!...Sempre libera” and “Addio, del passato” in La Traviata portray the conflict between freedom and sacrifice. Thus, literary psychology is reconstituted within musical temporality.
Chapter IV integrates the previous analyses and proposes a theoretical model of interaction between literature and opera on structural, emotional, and aesthetic levels. It argues that Verdi’s adaptation constitutes a reconfiguration of meaning: narrative time is reorganized into musical-emotional time; inner monologue is transformed into affective sound; and moral conflict is sublimated into universal human empathy. Through the threefold process of structural reconstruction, emotional transformation, and aesthetic transcendence, Verdi’s works achieve what may be termed the universalization of tragedy.
Chapter V concludes the study by summarizing Verdi’s three aesthetic principles of adaptation:(1) Internalization – transforming external events into psychological and emotional drama;(2) Temporalization – reorganizing literary time through musical rhythm and tonality;(3) Universalization – transcending specific historical and moral contexts to express the human condition of suffering and redemption. These principles establish Verdi not merely as an opera composer but as a philosopher of musical thought. His art dissolves the ethical tensions of literature into emotional temporality, revealing the essence of art as humanity’s self-reflective and transcendental pursuit.
Ultimately, this dissertation argues that Verdi’s operas represent the extension of literary language into musical time—a bidirectional transformation in which literature becomes audible and music becomes intellectual. Opera, in Verdi’s hands, thus emerges as “a literature that can be heard, ” embodying the evolution of human emotion through art.