Lo sublime en Wagner : Cuatro lecturas lacanianas de óperas clásicas

In four captivating essays on classical opera, Slavoj Žižek examines how certain structural motifs repeatedly dominate narratives in music and on stage when they embody pure, all-consuming desire. Wagner's heroes, for example, suffer from unbearable longing (Parsifal), an excessive yearning for the absolute (The Flying Dutchman), and a deadly excess of pure love (Tristan und Isolde). But why is the fulfillment of desire limited by pain and failure? Why is union with the beloved indefinitely postponed? While the impossibility of sexual intercourse and the postponement of fulfillment are pivotal moments in Wagner's dramatic art, Žižek detects similar motifs, along with structures of libidinal antagonism, in the operas of Léo Janáček, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Arnold Schoenberg.