In four compelling essays on classic opera, Slavoj Zizek examines how certain structural motifs repeatedly dominate the narratives by putting desire, as pure and captivating as possible, into music and on stage.

Wagner’s heroes, for instance, suffer from unbearable longing (Parsifal), an excessive yearning for the absolute (The Flying Dutchman), a deadly surplus of pure love (Tristan and Isolde).

But why is desire’s satisfaction fenced-off through pain and failure? Why is the unification with the loved one indefinitely postponed?

While the impossibility of the sexual relation and postponed fulfillment are critical moments in Wagner’s dramatic art, Zizek detects similar motifs, along with structures of libidinal antagonism, in the operas of Leos Janacek, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Arnold Schoenberg.