The Pedagogical Power of Tragedy: Puccini’s Love-and-Death Paradigm and Feminine Ideals in Early Twentieth-Century Music Education

Abstract

This article examines how Puccini’s love-and-death paradigm operated as a gendered cultural curriculum within early twentieth-century music education. Positioned within the History of Education, it treats opera as a pedagogical medium through which listening, appreciation, and conservatoire study transmitted ideals of feminine purity, obedience, sacrifice, and emotional refinement. Methodologically, the study uses a systematic literature review, historical-documentary interpretation, and thematic synthesis of recent scholarship on opera pedagogy, gender in music education, curriculum, and Puccini reception. The analysis shows that Puccinian tragedy should be read not as sentimental entertainment alone, but as educational evidence of how musical culture helped construct and normalise feminine ideals in pedagogical settings and historical imagination. This reframes tragedy as evidence of education, gender discipline, and memory.