Chérubin

Summary

Dominique Pagani discusses Cherubino, the page in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, mainly as the figure of indeterminacy. From one session to the next, he comes back to the same phrase: an adolescent "between two sexes and two ages"12. In 2016, he compares him to the narrator of a work he is discussing, who is also caught between two ages3. In the Musicosophie sessions devoted to Mozart, he calls him the most Mozartian character. He dwells on the scene where the Countess and Susanna dress him up as a girl4. He also reads the aria "Non so più" as an allusion to masturbation1. In the session devoted to Mignon, he notes that Cherubino stirs up trouble wherever the Count goes5. In 2023, he draws a notion from the character: the "Cherubino stage" of desire, a desire that is still undetermined, which he places within a reflection on the passage from the debauchery of meaning to the orgy of feeling6.

1. 1#14 Mozart once more7 Feb 2021 · 1:18:27
2. 2#9.23 “Ruled like music paper!” Bach, Nerval, Lévi-Strauss9 Jun 2021 · 1:46:27
3. 3What is to be done? 3/329 Jan 2016 · 1:02:20
4. 4#14 Mozart once more7 Feb 2021 · 1:50:10
5. 5#1 Mignon, or the song of silence7 Apr 2021 · 41:38
6. 6From the debauchery of sense to the orgy of sentiment29 May 2023 · 1:53:23

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.