Abstract: If opera is an art of dying, suicide is one of its familiar modes. In the first half of the 19th 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.
