Mad scenes

Stacey Alleaume sings ‘Ah! non credea mirarti’ from Bellini's opera La sonnambula.

Sopranos Ingela Brimberg (Elektra) and Sara Jakubiak (Chrysothemis) interpret the final scene of the opera Elektra. Orestes enters the palace and kills his mother and Aegisthus. Chrysothemis calls Electra back to the palace for the celebration. Electra is exhilarated about herself and her deeds: in a wild voice, she calls  for a dance and like a maenad, she dances herself blissfully to death.

Lucia (Venera Gimadieva), forced into marriage, kills her husband Arturo on their wedding night. As she descends into madness, Lucia imagines herself married to Edgardo, the man she is in love with and who has rejected her. In this Staatsoper Hamburg production, the aria 'Il dolce suono' is accompanied by a glass harmonica, as Donizetti had intended.

Nabucco (Nicola Alaimo) will tolerate neither the God of the Hebrews nor those of the Babylonians: only he will be revered by all. He condemns the Hebrews to death. Then a bolt of lightning strikes him, knocking the crown from his head and driving him mad. 'Chi mi toglie il regio scettro? Qual m'incalza orrendo spettro?’ ('Who has taken away my sceptre? What horrible spectre is stalking me?'). Zaccaria (Riccardo Zanellato) cries divine punishment and Abigaille (Saioa Hernández) seizes the crown.

Ewa Płonka sings ‘Una macchia è qui tuttora’ at Deutsche Oper am Rhein. The famous mad scene also known as the Sleepwalking scene, is Lady Macbeth's final appearance in Verdi's opera. Shakespeare's female villain has become undone by her own conscience. She is continuously rubbing her hands to get rid of an invisible splash of blood and, without realising who is around her, walks around the castle like a mad, exhausted sleepwalker, victim of the most atrocious feelings of remorse.

Boris Godunov (Guido Jentjens) has eliminated his rival, Tsarevich Dmitri, to gain power. Five years later, a usurper poses as the legal pretender to the throne and the people discover Boris's crimes. In this scene of madness - one of the most famous in the operatic repertoire - Godunov believes he sees Dmitri's ghost, begs God's forgiveness and collapses.

Tenor Peter Wedd at Polish National Opera in a production of Britten's opera Peter Grimes.

In the last act of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a troupe enters to present a play; suicide scene by Thisbé (Michael Axelsson) is reminiscent of the most famous scenes of madness in Italian bel canto operas...