Singing Roles in Tragedy

Abstract In this chapter the issue is not so much the techniques and experience of the singing actor himself, but what the formal structure of Greek tragedy — rhythmically and musically — has to do with its ideological meaning. The approach taken owes much in its broad approach to the work of Fredric Jameson on the relationship between a text's patent external form and its latent ‘political unconscious’. It is argued that the aural and musical form of Athenian tragedy — especially the points at which solo song and speech intersected one another — is what Marx would have called a ‘sublimate’ of the social structure and aspirations of the Athenian democracy. Tragic form was partly characterized by patriarchal and ethnocentric notions, even to the point of making its women and barbarians express themselves in vocal media distinguishable in large measure from those adopted by free Greek male characters in their prime.