The politics of opera. (Viewpoint).(Brief Article)

The Met's repertory this winter has been a showcase for what contemporary commentators might call "failed states," examples of civic incompetence or misfeasance that even the leaders of Argentina or Afghanistan might be challenged to match. Think of Flanders, as governed by Philip II. Or the Emperor's realm in Die Frau ohne Schatten, ruled by a sovereign whose sole activities, we are told in Act I, are to hunt and, well, neck. Too bad, really, that the Emperor cannot be transplanted to the world of Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tiresias, where depopulation is a threat.

This month, the Met broadcasts three more operas that contribute to its enthralling presentation of underperforming governments. Two, Luisa Miller and Rigoletto, present horrifying case studies of a hereditary aristocracy's abuse of power. The third, Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, which received its Met premiere in February, is set in the Russia of Alexander I, invaded by Napoleon and saved chiefly by a combination of geography, a savage climate and one gutsy general.

Another thread runs through most of these operas: they offer stinging commentaries on the history of the time in which they were written. Les Mamelles de Tiresias, Poulenc's World War II operatic adaptation of Guillaume Apollinaire's World War I play, makes clear the composer's belief that France was as seriously in need of a good restructuring in the early 1940s as it was in 1919. Mamells, Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortileges and Erik Satie's ballet Parade make up the triple bill the Met calls Parade, which is being presented for the first time since the death in 1990 of its creator, John Dexter. All three works are rich in irony, whimsy, wit and a kind of melancholy one might expect after cataclysmic wars. On page 28, David J. Baker describes how the Met put together the revival of this legendary production.

The final form taken by War and Peace seems to revolve in considerable measure around the question of whether General Kutuzov was sufficiently heroic to represent Joseph Stalin. The story of the development of War and Peace is presented in this month's issue in "Epic Proportions," by Laurel E. ...