Beyond the Implicit: The Bassarids and Venus und Adonis by Hans Werner Henze

A full-fledged queer subtext unfolds in the plot of Hans Werner Henze’s operas «The Bassarids» and «Venus und Adonis». The paper identifies the covert queer features of the characters and their relationships in the librettos and scores by referring to the dramaturgy of both operas. The reading show that lyrical theatre can provide the artist with an opportunity to develop an allegorical dramatization of uncomfortable or even scandalous topics such as non-normative gender identities. Music can be functional to conveying an implicitly queer message, along with the other channels of communication that make a multimedia performance of the lyrical theatre (plot, libretto, staging).