Opera’s Scariest Characters (Halloween Feature)

Warning: this post contains references to, and images of, operatic violence and gore, namely one insanely bloody wedding gown. Skip it, kids.

Halloween is upon us! To get yourself in the mood, read up on a few of opera’s most terrifying characters, from an infanticidal sorceress to a falsely suave lecher. Which operatic character scares the high notes out of you?

Medea (Cherubini)

Sondra Radvanovsky as Medea (Marty Sohl/Met Opera)

This princess will stop at nothing to get back at her ex, Jason, who dumped her after fathering her two sons. Oh, by the way, before any of this ever happened, she killed her own brother as a distraction. That’s all water under the mythological bridge by the time the opera starts, though. First, Medea crashes Jason’s wedding. Then she sends his bride poisoned wedding clothes, and for the topper, stabs her kids to death, because they’re also Jason’s sons and she wants to inflict maximum pain on him. Finally she sets the temple of Corinth on fire and magically vanishes, because she’s also a sorceress. Zowie.

Salome (Strauss)

Karita Mattila as Salome (Met Opera)

The competition is fierce, but Salome may be opera’s champion nutcase. Many of opera’s scariest people have a mad side, but I think we can all agree that someone who has a love scene with a severed head is a true wacko. She, the princess of Judea, falls suddenly and irrationally in love with the prophet Jochanaan, better known as John the Baptist, but he rejects her. As a reward for her Dance of the Seven Veils, in which she progressively disrobes, she demands Jochanaan’s head. It’s shocking, even for today’s standards, such as they are. The Met is mounting a new production of it next season, but beheaded guys aren’t my type, so I’ll pass.

Scarpia (Puccini’s Tosca)

Luca Salsi as Scarpia (Karen Almond/Met Opera)

The smooth-talking police chief actually takes the cake for me. The depraved Baron Vitellio Scarpia isn’t oppressed or insane; he’s just evil to the rotten core. He enjoys women, dinner, ordering executions à la “Off with his head!”, and did I say women? Most of all, he likes women who despise him. His credo is that “violent conquest” is nicer than “gentle consent,” and to that end, he torments Tosca for a whole act by forcing her to listen to her lover being tortured and threatening to execute him unless she yields to Scarpia’s lust. It’s chilling. This is a man you don’t want to go near, unless it be from the safety of Family Circle. Especially if you’re pretty.

Queen of the Night (Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte)

Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night (Richard Termine/Met Opera)

I seem to be in the minority, but I never found the Queen of the Night that scary. (It may be because offstage, the warm and wonderful Kathryn Lewek, the definitive Queen, is the antithesis of her role.) To be sure, the Queen is not very nice — she orders her daughter, Pamina, to kill her rival on pain of disinheritance, and then plots to storm the temple of the misogynistic Freemason-like priests. Yeah, she does promise Pamina in marriage to the guy who tried to violate her, but the nutty staccati and high F she sings in her aria “Der Hölle Rache” are scarier than the Queen herself. Still, look at those nails!!

Not-so-scary bonus: Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti)

Nadine Sierra as Lucia (Marty Sohl/Met Opera)

Poor Lucia — she’s only scary when she’s crazy, and she’s not even the villain! After murdering her new husband (the one she was coerced into marrying) offstage, she just goes on to a 20-minute-long hallucination about her true love, roses, and ghosts. Furthermore, she spends the first two acts sane and her music is so beautiful that it’s hard to be frightened of her. The scariest part is her famous blood-soaked wedding dress (not her blood), so just stare at the subtitles for 20 minutes and you’ll sleep just fine.

Then there are the witches — Rosina Lickspittle in Hansel and Gretel, Ježibaba in Rusalka, and Ortrud in Lohengrin — the beheading princess Turandot, the dissolute libertine Don Giovanni and the ghost that drags him to hell, the regicidal Macbeth and his Lady, the slimy Iago, the devil Mephistopheles… almost all operas have some sort of villain, so this post could go on forever.

However, we’ll stop there. Voilà! Some of the scariest loonies from the wonderful and often wacky world of opera. Happy Halloween!