A Reading of Stage, Voice, and Spectatorship Through Singer in Green, The Singer with a Glove, and Woman with Opera Glasses
Introduction – Painter of the Performing Arts: Degas’s Aesthetics of Performance
The cultural fabric of nineteenth-century Paris was shaped not only by urban planning, architecture, or class transformation, but also by the rise of the performing arts. Theatre, opera, and ballet created both a rich visual environment and a social universe of representation. Within this world, Edgar Degas positioned himself neither simply as an observer nor merely as an Impressionist, but as a painter of bodily gesture, stage light, and the economy of performance.
This essay examines three works in which Degas represents women performers and spectators — Singer in Green, The Singer with a Glove, and Woman with Opera Glasses. Its purpose is not merely to analyze the figures, but to reveal the aesthetic and political meanings of appearing on stage, giving voice, and looking.
1. The Singer with a Glove – Performance Turned Inward
The Silence of a Gesture
Edgar Degas’s 1878 work The Singer with a Glove confronts the viewer with an almost inward intensity that distances itself from conventional Impressionist immediacy. At the center of the composition, a woman sings with her mouth open. Her left hand rests against her chest, while her right hand holds a black glove. Yet the pose feels less like an outward theatrical gesture than the visual equivalent of an expression folded inward.
There is no exuberance or theatrical eruption in the woman’s face. Instead, a tension and a sense of withdrawal can be felt. Her eyes do not meet the spectator. The figure seems less confined within a pictorial stage than enclosed within her own emotional state. Degas therefore chooses to represent not the spectacle of performance but its personal weight and internal burden.
Formal Construction: Color Accompanying Silence
Pastel tones and surface textures play an important role in the work. Pale blues, purples, and grays dominate the singer’s clothing. The softness created by the medium combines with her posture to produce not theatrical tension but a quiet emotional intensity.
The gesture of holding the glove remains ambiguous: Is she undressing, preparing herself, or is it simply a neutral hand movement following the inner rhythm of the song? Through this uncertainty, Degas makes the viewer’s relationship with the figure more complex.
The background is blurred; there is no clear indication of scenery or audience. The figure is therefore isolated both spatially and psychologically. She is on stage, yet at the same time seems detached from it.
Iconological Interpretation: The Female Body, Voice, and Visibility
For nineteenth-century Paris, women performers occupied a complex position at the intersection of aesthetics and eroticism, art and labor exploitation. The woman in The Singer with a Glove carries this complexity within her body:
- The hand placed on the chest: It points toward the bodily origin of voice — breath and the diaphragm — while also suggesting a self-conscious gesture of restraint.
- The glove: It marks a moment on the threshold between dressing and undressing. Within nineteenth-century iconography, the glove could signify both sexual mystery and social decorum.
- The open mouth: It is the audible gesture of singing, yet the gesture appears to be performed less in order to be heard than in order to be lived.
Degas does not attempt simply to paint sound. He paints what happens to the body that carries it. The figure appears almost exposed to the inner violence of her own voice. What we witness is less the singer through the eyes of the audience than the voice intensifying within the singer herself.
The Disruption of the Gaze: No Contact with the Audience
The figure’s refusal of eye contact forms part of Degas’s strategic disruption of the gaze. The woman is not there simply to be watched; she is there because she must endure the stage. This removes her from the position of erotic object and turns her into a subject carrying a burden.
Degas’s approach marks an important threshold in the representation of the female body on stage. The woman is not spectacular; she is solitary, vulnerable, and inwardly directed.
Conclusion: The Anatomy of an Inward Performance
The Singer with a Glove points toward the realistic and psychological dimension of Degas’s engagement with women performers rather than toward an idealized aesthetics of spectacle. The figure is not merely a representative transmitting her voice to the outside world; she is a subject occupied with what that voice does within her.
The work transforms the stage from a site of spectacle into a space where inner conflict reaches the surface. The body on stage is therefore not Degas’s sole concern; what matters is the voice and inner world carried by that body.
2. Singer in Green – Explosive Gesture, Visualized Voice
The Theatrical Explosion of a Stage Moment
Singer in Green is one of Degas’s most vivid, outward, and stage-lit representations of women performers. This time, the figure is not caught merely in a pose but almost in the middle of an eruption of sound. Her head is slightly thrown back, her mouth open, her right arm raised toward her shoulder, while the features of her face carry an intensity corresponding to the voice.
In contrast to the inward solitude of The Singer with a Glove, this figure represents a moment of elevation and outward expression at the center of performance. Here sound is not merely imagined; it is visualized.
Color, Light, and Surface: The Exuberant Use of Pastel
Degas uses pastel here not only as a formal medium but as an emotional one.
- Color Palette: Green, orange, yellow, and blue vibrate around the figure. The warmer tones, particularly the red and blue stripes of the skirt, appear almost to move with musical rhythm.
- Light: Stage light illuminates the face and body while allowing other parts of the image to sink into shadow. This directional illumination intensifies the atmosphere of spectacle.
- Surface: Layers of pastel build up across the costume, pigments overlapping until the body becomes a surface that seems to shimmer beneath stage light and almost vibrate with sound.
Degas represents not only the figure but also the physical energy surrounding her. The gesture is not static but stretched with tension. Sound appears trapped within the body and simultaneously on the verge of being released.
Iconological Interpretation: The Burden or Power of Performance?
The figure in Singer in Green carries both faces of the stage:
- On one hand, her strength and visibility allow the woman performer to occupy space on stage.
- On the other, that very visibility coincides with the possibility of being objectified by society.
Degas’s representation is neither a romanticized image of a singer nor an explicit act of social criticism. It is a moment of visibility. Yet this visibility is created not simply through the woman’s autonomous subjecthood but through the convergence of gaze, stage light, and bodily intensity.
The figure is theatrical but not controlled. The gesture is direct, the body open, and the expression intensely concentrated. As in The Singer with a Glove, there is almost no concrete stage setting in the background, because Degas’s concern is not the stage itself but the condition of being on stage.
Opening Toward the Gaze: At the Threshold of Contact with the Audience
Unlike the previous figure, this woman is turned outward toward the viewer. Even if her eyes do not directly meet the spectator, her body, voice, and gesture belong to the stage. She is placed within the structure of performance.
What dominates, however, is less erotic display than the effect of the performing body on stage. Degas does not simply make the woman visible as an object of spectacle. Instead, he constructs her as the bearer of an aesthetic gesture. The body is not merely made visible; visibility itself becomes embodied.
Conclusion: The Moment Where Light, Sound, and Gesture Converge
Singer in Green is one of Degas’s most outward expressions of the stage. There is neither withdrawal nor emotional containment. The painting does not freeze the moment; it paints its energy. Gesture feels ready to erupt, while sound spreads across the surface like an invisible but palpable substance.
The work therefore represents not merely performance but the direct transfer of its aesthetic intensity. The body is no longer only a carrier; it becomes an event.
3. Woman with Opera Glasses – The Stage of the Gaze
This Time, It Is Not the Stage but the Person Looking at It
Woman with Opera Glasses marks an important shift in Degas’s engagement with theatrical representation. Here the artist turns away from the performer and focuses instead on the spectator. A woman looks through opera glasses at something — or someone — that remains outside the image. The strange feature of the composition is precisely this absence: she looks, but what she sees is not represented. Her line of sight extends beyond the frame. By making the direction of the gaze invisible, Degas leaves the actual stage of the painting empty.
This structure fundamentally alters both the figure’s position and her relationship with the viewer. She may be looking not only toward the stage but perhaps toward the viewer. The boundaries between stage and auditorium, artist and spectator, subject and object consequently begin to dissolve.
The Reversal of the Composition
The work adopts a comparatively graphic visual language.
- Framing: The figure is shown approximately from the waist upward. The opera glasses occupy a central position and function almost as an extension of her face.
- Shadow and Tone: The background remains indistinct. Context fades while the act of looking becomes more concentrated.
- Light: The figure is clearly illuminated; facial details remain relatively distinct, while hair and clothing are described with softer contours.
The opera glasses act as a kind of “frame within the frame.” The woman does not merely look; she looks through an instrument that directs and limits vision. Spectatorship therefore becomes not passive observation but a deliberate visual intervention.
Iconological Interpretation: The Gender and Space of Seeing
In nineteenth-century Paris, opera was not merely an artistic environment but a public space in which class and gender relations were represented. Women occupied an ambiguous position within such spaces because they could simultaneously be spectators and objects of spectatorship. Woman with Opera Glasses confronts this duality:
- The woman is a spectator, but she also occupies a space in which other eyes may be watching her.
- The opera glasses are both an instrument of sight and a kind of shield for the gaze. They conceal part of the woman while simultaneously concentrating attention upon her.
- The figure’s position destabilizes the viewer: Are we looking at her, or is she looking at us?
This structure overturns the conventional perspective that places the viewer securely at the center of representation. The woman is not merely an object within the field of vision; she becomes an active subject who looks. Degas thus transforms the gaze from something merely represented into one of the primary forces constructing representation itself.
The Gaze Itself Becomes a Stage
The opera glasses are more than an accessory. They are an optical system that organizes and intensifies vision. The viewer’s position therefore becomes increasingly unstable. Is the woman looking at a performance, or at another spectator?
By making the object of her gaze invisible, Degas allows the gaze itself to become theatricalized. The true performance no longer takes place on stage but in the visual power created by the woman’s act of looking.
This figure differs from both the visibility of Singer in Green and the withdrawal of The Singer with a Glove. She is not on stage, yet as a spectator she becomes the person whose gaze creates the stage.
Conclusion: A Composition Focused Not on the Stage but on the Gaze
Woman with Opera Glasses demonstrates that Degas understood the theatrical world not only through performance but through ways of seeing. The woman is no longer merely a figure; she becomes a subject who establishes the visual field and directs meaning.
Seeing is not a passive act here. It becomes a spectacle equivalent to the stage itself. Degas thereby pushes against the traditional boundaries between observer and observed in the history of painting.
Between Voice, Gesture, and Gaze: The Ontology of the Stage in Degas
At first glance, The Singer with a Glove, Singer in Green, and Woman with Opera Glasses appear to focus on the stage or figures associated with theatrical life. Considered together, however, they reveal a deeper concern: the pictorial construction of the aesthetics of spectacle, the politics of visibility, and bodily expression.
Together, these three works show that Degas was not merely a painter of performers. He thought about the stage itself as an aesthetic, sensory, and social form. In all three works, the physical stage largely disappears: there is little architectural context, no developed scenic environment, and no sustained relationship between multiple figures. Yet through posture, gesture, and gaze, the condition of the stage becomes the internal organization of the painting.
The Pictorial Representation of Voice – From Inwardness to Overflow
- In The Singer with a Glove, voice feels inward, almost like a burden exhausting the body. Singing pushes the figure into internal solitude.
- In Singer in Green, sound bursts outward and the body becomes an event resonating beneath stage light. Gesture expands beyond ordinary movement.
- In both works, Degas paints sound not as something auditory but as a bodily event. The figures therefore become subjective beings carrying emotional intensity rather than mere representations of performers.
The Ontology of Gesture – From Silence to Visibility
For Degas, gesture is not simply dramatic expression but the trace of the figure’s inner state reaching the surface.
- Is the hand on the chest in The Singer with a Glove an act of protection, or an emphasis on the bodily source of voice?
- In Singer in Green, the arm rising toward the shoulder becomes an outward form of stage expression.
- Gesture in these works is not merely movement but a carrier of meaning. Through it, the figures communicate what they endure or what they seek to express.
Gaze and Visibility – Who Looks at Whom?
- Woman with Opera Glasses contains the most radical shift of position within the three works: rather than encountering someone being watched on stage, we encounter the person looking toward it.
- The figure becomes not merely a spectator but a subject through whom the gaze itself becomes a stage.
- Degas disrupts the traditional opposition between watcher and watched: the woman is no longer only the one being seen; she also occupies the position of the seeing subject.
At this point, the structure linking the three works becomes complete.
Voice (song), gesture (expression), and gaze (vision) form a triangle. Each figure intensifies one of these dimensions, while the stage is constructed between them. The stage is no longer a physical location; it is an image created through the body of voice, the expression of gesture, and the direction of the gaze.
The Ontology of the Stage in Degas: The Tension of Representation
These three works suggest that what Degas paints is not simply women appearing on stage but the stage itself.
- The stage is an event.
- The stage is an economy of looking.
- The stage is the moment in which gesture collides with meaning.
Degas’s figures are neither completely free nor completely objectified. They occupy both the interior of spectacle and its tense boundary. His women are neither simply eroticized nor romanticized. Through them, Degas paints the limits of representation.
Final Word: Stage, Figure, and Silent Violence
This three-part reading reveals that for Degas, the stage is not merely something the eye sees. It is a field carried by the body, imposed by the gaze, and shaped by voice. Painting opens that field silently but with considerable force.
And perhaps when the gaze in Woman with Opera Glasses is directed toward us, we are no longer simply watching the stage. We have entered it.
