L’art de la mort volontaire L’opéra italien et ses suicidés romantiques sur la scène parisienne

If opera is an art of dying, suicide is one of its familiar modes. In the first half of the 19^th century, suicide – for Catholics a crime, for doctors a disease – fuelled heated debates. The libretti of Italian operas performed at the time on the Parisian stage show that suicide, even though it is neither a crime nor a taboo, is still not secularized: as an act of courage, love or alienation, it brings to fruition the heroism of beings so pure they bring their passions to extremes.