Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>A study of Scottish composer Judith Weir’s dramatic representations of the cultural category of the child, in particular of orphan figures, in the children’s opera The Black Spider (1985), the operatic monodrama The Consolations of Scholarship (1985), and A Night at the Chinese Opera (1987). Weir’s earlier works like King Harald’s Saga (1979) caricature adults in cartoonish play with subject position and speaking presence. Young performers in The Black Spider critique adult morality in a parable-like drama. Weir’s narrative in the “speeded-up opera” of Consolations retells the Yuan-era drama “The Orphan of Chao” in rapid-fire epic narration, with the Orphan Boy (mezzo-soprano voice) a Confucian figure of filial piety and vengeance. Chinese Opera transposes the same story into a three-act staging. The Orphan here is seen from a Brechtian “social point of view” in Act I as an infant, as a seven-year-old boy flying his kite (also silent), then as a young man realizing his own life history (Act II), before plotting to avenge his father’s murder (Act III). Weir’s Orphan performatively embodies the interlocking generations of a dynasty, the Proppian narrative function of a Seeker-Hero, his quest taking musical shape in Wagnerian leitmotivic flashbacks.</jats:p>