Genius and Melancholia

The book is an interdisciplinary study of the way an outstanding individual functions in society. The author explores how the artistic genius of Fryderyk Chopin is structured or performed and how the theatre of his everyday life is interpreted as dramatic practice and its backstage. Using the biography of the Polish composer, the author analyses performance in Romanticism, individualism and Chopin’s performance as a reborn and resurgent idea. Theauthor also explores the notion of genius, tuberculosis as a metaphor of the period, melancholy, virtuosity, dandyism and the “multitude of Romanticisms” in the first half of the 19 th century. She focuses on the social perception of these concepts and their functioning in the 19th century European artistic context.