Aaron J. Rabushka wrote:

>If men held all the power why did Tamino have to prove himself worthy of
>Pamina, and why did Papageno at least have to try to do so with regard to
>Papagena?

It's been a while and I don't have the libretto handy, but didn't Tamino
have to prove his worthiness to the most powerful *man* in the opera  --
Pamina's father? ;-)

>Relations between the genders and among racial and ethnic groups provide
>a vital discussion topic for artists and historians in the US and through
>out most of the rest of the world as well (or so I would suspect).  Art
>often provides necessary documentation of these issues.  ...  This issue
>isn't gonna go away, folks, even if we pretend that the art that documents
>it isn't there.

Well put, indeed - though I didn't get the impression that anyone on
the list really suggested that we pretend that these works don't exist or
that we actively purge them from the canon (I may have missed the relevant
posts, however).  The issue to me seemed to be how we stage them and
experience them now.

Kathleen O'Connell