In this widely ranging collection of essays, a group of contemporary psychoanalyst/authors turn their finely-honed listening skills and clinical experience to plumb the depths and illuminate themes of character, drama, myth, culture, and psychobiography in some of the world’s most beloved operas. The richly diverse chapters are unified by a psychoanalytic approach to the nuances of unconscious mental life and emotional experience as they unfold synergistically in opera’s music, words, and drama. Opera creates a unique bridge between thought and feeling, mind and body, and conscious and unconscious that offers fertile ground for psychological exploration of profound human truths. Each piece is written in a colorful and non-technical manner that will appeal to mental health professionals, musicians, academics, and general readers wishing to better understand and appreciate opera as an art form.

Examining the intolerance of homosexuality in the early medieval period, this study challenges the long-held belief that the early Middle Ages tolerated same-sex relations. The work focuses on Anglo-Saxon literature but also includes examinations of contemporary opera, dance and theatre.

Composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) likely suffered from a manic-depressive disorder but in his time very little was known about mental illness, and suicide was not a topic for general discussion. Wagner was often plagued by extreme mood swings; he used his operas, especially the librettos, to express himself and his personal difficulties. This investigation of the suicidal themes in Wagner's life and operas--Die Fliegender Hollander, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, the Ring cycle, and Parsifal--shows how manic-depressive illness, particularly the depressive part of it, affected Wagner's life and art. It also analyzes the influence of Giambattista Vico's theories of cycles (and how these theories appeared in Wagner's work), suicide as a theatrical and operatic phenomenon, and the way in which the theme of suicide has appeared in other works of the literary and performing arts.