I'm up to my eyebrows in opera today and am wondering if it�s possible for me to get through a lecture on Wagner without singing "Kill the wabbit, Kill the wabbit!"

Or maybe Bugs Bunny is taking over because my brain is dying a slow death after spending way too much time obsessing over the paper topics I need to hand out on Wednesday but haven't actually written yet. I need two different topics, both of which are specific enough that they won't be impossible to grade, but with enough leeway that students can find something they actually might want to write about. It�s quite tricky. I've been asking everyone I know for suggestions, but so far nothing particularly useful and I must say that the assignments I've seen that have been used in this course by others are less than exciting (and some are downright incomprehensible).

As a diversion, I have been devising some somewhat controversial issues to bring up in the context of our discussion on opera, namely issues of exoticism and race in Aida (and its contemporary manifestations) as well as the question of Wagner and its censorship in Israel. I'll get a discussion out of them yet. Ve haf vays of making you talk (how's that for exoticism?)

Boris and Natasha aside, I am feeling woefully underinformed about the nuances of nineteenth century European history. As I put together my lectures on these operas that I have not studied in detail in years, I am struck by how evident the politics becomes in the music itself. While I am certainly qualified to explain my views on the political catalysts for the division of opera into three distinct national styles (Italian, French and German) and how the manifestations of these styles reflect in detail many of the political priorities that gave rise to the world wars, I wish I had more to offer in terms of historical detail. I'm good at big picture, not so good at detail. My research has had me isolated in the U.S. in the same time period. I see the fallout in my project -- the mass immigrations. But I don't see nuance. The U.S. is not about nuance, not then, not now.

This whole trajectory began when I came across an article discussing the danger of the way Don Giovanni is treated in intro music textbooks. Don Giovanni tells the story of an unrepentant serial rapist who eventually pays the price by being dragged into the pits of hell while his victims moralize about it. I've never thought of the opera as being especially anti-woman. Far from it -- the women gain the ultimate power and effect the change in the opera. But, as the article point out, the intro textbooks don't show you that part--operas are all abridged. They call Don Giovanni a "romantic hero" and show the scenes where he seduces and rapes a peasant girl and then beats up her fiance. There is no demonstration of moral consequence and certainly no repentance. The students see that a romantic hero is raping women in a comic opera and getting away with it. How, the article's author queries, is that supposed to make someone who's been in a date rape situation feel?

As someone who's been in that situation and someone who loves Don Giovanni, the problem never occurred to me, but I know the whole opera. Would it have bothered me to watch just those scenes without the moral outcome? Quite possibly. But the whole article raises another question -- what are my ethical responsibilities as a teacher? Am I obligated to temper such interpretations? I do, of course, wish to offer my own take on it and I had always planned to show the Act II finale, because it's the best part of the opera. But if I hadn't, what then? And of course this brings us back to the Aida and Wagner questions again. I feel strongly that I need to present these works in historical context and get the students to think about the issues. These are not resolvable things -- they are complex and individual and I have no intention of dragging my students around to my point of view or anyone else�s. But I do feel that my responsibility as a music consumer is to know the issues and act according to my own beliefs. I happen to think that Wagner's music is too important to censor, although I certainly would never plan on forcing a bunch of Holocaust survivors to sit through the Ring cycle (or anyone else for that matter--I am not so cruel as to ambush anyone with more than 16 hours of opera). Moreover I strongly believe that felling our geniuses works to our advantage. We need to understand their beliefs in their historical context and we also need to understand that just because someone believes things we think are wrong doesn't mean he isn�t a genius. Complicating the issue is important. When we don't complicate the issue we end up creating the same problems all over again. If we ignore it, we are accepting it.

Most of all, though, I love the immediacy of these issues. The fact that opera, which seems a genre doomed to increasing cultural marginalization, is still in the thick of social debate, is still socially relevant (operas centuries old, no less), makes me happy. I find I do a lot of rationalizing to explain why I do what I do, but this is one of the things that makes it easiest to justify.

Okay, I probably should have stopped after Bugs Bunny.

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