Bokina begins with an analysis of Monteverdi's three extant operas, which address in an oblique way the political and ideological dualities of aristocratic rule in seventeenth-century Italy. He then moves to Mozart's Don Giovanni, which he views as a celebration of the demise of a predatory aristocracy. He presents Beethoven's Fidelio as an example of the political spirit of a revolution based on republican virtue, and Wagner's Parsifal as a utopian music drama that projects romantic anticapitalist ideals onto an imagined past. He shows that Strauss's Elektra and Schoenberg's Erwartung transform the traditional operatic depiction of madness by reflecting the emerging Freudian psychoanalysis of that era. And he argues that operas by Pfitzner, Hindemith, and Schoenberg explore the political roles of art and the artist, each couching contemporary conditions in an allegory about the fate of art in a historical period of transition. Finally, Bokina offers a reappraisal of Henze's The Bassarids as a political opera that confronts the promise and limits of the sensual-sexual revolt of the twentieth century.

"This book will be of interest not only to musicologists but to opera lovers in general". -- Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School