SOURCE: Morris-Keitel, Peter, Alexa Larson-Thorisch, and Audrius Dundzila. “Transgression and Affirmation: Gender Roles, Moral Codes, and Utopian Vision in Richard Wagner's Operas.” In Re-Reading Wagner, edited by Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand, pp. 61-77. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Morris-Keitel, Larson-Thorisch, and Dundzila offer a feminist examination of gender in Wagner's operas, concentrating on the traditionally bourgeois-capitalist gender roles of Wagner's characters.

I

“Our existing opera is a culinary opera. It was a means of pleasure long before it turned into merchandise.”¹ Bertolt Brecht's remarks concerning opera, here in regard to his Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1929), seem to repeat the obvious: namely, that opera is as much an experience as a pleasure. As such, opera is a source of sensual gratification, which is not only a result of its form but also of its content. At the same time, Brecht maintained that...