The Show Must Go On: Aging, Care, and Musical Performance in Quartet1

This paper explores the imbrication of musical performance, aging, and care in Quartet (2012), a film adapted from Ronald Harwood’s play of the same name (1999). Quartet portrays a group of past opera divas reuniting at a retirement home and deciding, at least momentarily, to set aside the fears and challenges that accompany their aging and go back onstage to reprise their past success as an operatic quartet, drawing attention to what they can still do rather than what they cannot. The film foregrounds their comeback and backgrounds the need for care that has led each quartet member to move into the retirement home. In this paper, I draw attention to the concealment of care’s vital contribution to aging well, as portrayed in the film adaptation of the play. I conclude that the care home portrayed in Quartet, though presented in the film version as a “template” for care, relies on troubling understandings of care work and has room for only the ideal old.