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In:What makes a Figure: Rethinking figurativity
Edited by Herbert L. Colston
[Figurative Thought and Language 19] 2025
► pp. 98–122

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Chapter 4
Multimodal meaning-making in opera

Metaphors at the intersection οf text, music, and images in Wagner’s Lohengrin

Published online: 28 October 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.19.04sta
Abstract
The aim of the present chapter is to explore opera as a multimodal piece of art comprising three modalities: the written libretto (verbal mode), the music score (music mode), and the staging based on the scenical directions provided in the libretto (visual mode). We investigate the extent to which multimodal figurative processes such as conceptual metaphor and metonymy contribute to construct meaning in Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. We focus on the affordances of text, image, and music to evoke the impossible union between the divine Lohengrin and the mortal Elsa through three increasingly complex multimodal metaphors: (1) divine is high pitch/human is low pitch; (2) happiness is major chord / sadness is minor & diminished chord; (3) relationships between divine and human are relationships between tonalities. Our cognitive account of Lohengrin has implications for figuration in that (1) figurative meaning may not always be a stable quality but it is dynamically constructed, and (2) figurative meaning may not reside in a single word, an image, or a bar in the music but emerges holistically from a more complex whole.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lohengrin and Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk
  • 3.Meaning-making in opera as a multimodal and dynamic process
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1divine is high pitch and human is low pitch
    • 5.2happiness is major chord and sadness is minor chord
    • 5.3relationships between divine-human are relationships between tonalities
  • 6.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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