Fury

One of the oddest things about music that one of the most elemental emotions gets almost no mention in the literature.

The Gaelic language famously distinguishes between emotions that "we can control" (e.g. happiness) and emotions that "come upon us and we have no control". Fear, fury, hunger and thirst just "descend" upon us. We don't control them. (This is embedded in Gaelic linguistic terminology and Joyce famously makes both fun of and respects thus in the opening chapter of Ulysses with the milkmaid.)

Famously, the Indian system while acknowledging the importance of fury tackles it as a "transient" emotion and not worthy of representation. They focus on the "permanent".

How interesting then that the composer that is considered "pretty" is the only one to write about elemental emotions. (Incidentally, the "pretty" part only exists because the surface beauty hides the almost insanely volatile detail lying beneath the surface.)

Mozart.

He gives it twice to his greatest villainesses - once in Idomeneo and once in Die Zauberflöte (the famous "Queen of the Night" aria.)

Yet, he really lets it rip loose once in Figaro where the Countess sings quietly about the Count's (implied) infidelity.

Nobody that knows Mozart and his equally crazy librettist Lorenzo da Ponte would deny that their three great operas deal with almost elemental emotions. They are volcanic. It's crazy that he's thought of as "pretty".