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What Revolutionary Operas Do

Chapter 6 is the third of three chapters on “revolutionary operas.” It uses musical analysis to establish a theoretical approach. The chapter returns to song, now as the core of revolutionary operas and people’s operas, and shows how key opera songs are designed to be portable. In this sense, songs can be lifted from operas and rearranged for concert use, either as songs in new styles or in instrumental or orchestral versions. The chapter argues that the message, contained in the “seed” (according to “seed theory”), is retained even when lyrics are no longer present, because of familiarity. Operas are shown to move beyond film and cinema (as Lenin’s/Stalin’s favored cultural production) as they make audiences part of the spectacle: the argument links Benjamin’s “panoramas” to Foucault’s “panopticon,” zooming in on musical content to identify topoi forms and themes and Wagnerian melodic leitmotifs, which allow “seeds” to be retained in new works and new arrangements.