Marxism and opera

[Michael Hoover]

interested listers might check out John Bokina's _Opera & Politics: From
Monteverdi to Henze_, Yale, 1997...I posted a note about this book with a 
table of contents to one or the other of these lists several weeks ago...
among other things, Bokina 

argues that Monteverdi's *Ulisse* glorifies the past of a declining 
republic

views Mozart's Don Giovanni as a 'tragic hero' for his insistence upon a 
libertine life

interprets Beethoven's *Fidelio* as 'an allegory of the French Revolution, 
the supreme example of bourgeois republican virtue' (p. 75)

characterizes Wagner's *Parsifal* as romantic anti-capitalism

sees Strauss's *Elektra* & Schoenberg's *Erwatung* as disillusioned
retreats from politics

discusses the postmodern 'aesthetic-politics' of Henze's *The Bassarids*

Michael Hoover