Our work focuses on the symbolic representation of the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) startingfrom Bachelard’s “material imagination” and leading us to reflect upon the dramatic and literary dynamics(from Hugo and Shakespeare especially) upstream of Verdi’s operas in order to analyze them from a bothliterary and musical point of view. From the mythography of the four elements different figurations oftime emerge from the Verdian libretti and allow a symbologic thematic reading.Thus, the Traviata’s heroin is confronted with tempus fugit epitomized by the frenetic musicalrhythm. The impatient carpe diem then contrasts with the advent of love inevitably linked to time’s fatefullinearity. Fires of passion distinguish themselves from the ethereal image of Violetta gliding from one joyto the other playing on a palette of several elements. Similarly, an analytical reconstruction of theBallo in mascherawill prove that the characters are powerless and superfluous in front of inflexible fate. Timethen suddenly speeds up in Rigolettoin the midst of water imagery.In this work, Bakhtin’s “chronotope ofcrisis” comes into play, causing a reversal of the temporal direction and a precipitation of the passing oftime embodied in the horse’ gallop-like concluding rhythm. The crystallized time inDon Carlosoriginatesfrom the lovers’ experience, who find refuge in the repeatable time of memory whereas another memory,infused with fire symbols heralds a return of the devastating time ofIl Trovatore. But a second temporalsystem, linear, where fire is devouring, takes shape in this darker work, leading eventually to an etherealmovement of the lovers’ escape from their already-gone terrestrial condition. Finally, the devastating timebrings forth death inMacbethandOtello, which share an underlying Shakespearean substrate. Thencomes the final fall of the hero. As if the insoluble tragedy of the Shakespearean source met the intimatepessimism and artistic doubts of the mature Giuseppe Verdi.

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   |texte=   The symbolic of the four elements and the figurations of time : from European dramaturgy to Verdi’s librett
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