Just occasionally, opera takes on social issues, not as high-minded fiction like Beethoven’s Fidelio, but as direct polemical engagement with current events. Notable among such attempts in the earlier Twentieth Century are the works inspired by the playwright and activist Bertolt Brecht: the Threepenny Opera and Mahagonny by Kurt Weill, and (indirectly) The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein. By their nature, such works teeter between the genres of musical theater and true opera, but the Weill works at least have lasted well beyond the times out of which they sprang.
 
American composer Philip Glass has chosen a different approach. His "Portrait Trilogy"—Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten—focus on real people whose life and ideas had real social consequences, seen from the perspective of posterity. For the politics of satire and agitation, he substitutes an almost timeless ritual of contemplation, in which the meaning of his protagonists’ lives is allowed to permeate the awareness of the audience by a kind of musical osmosis. rb.

The plots of the two main operas to be sampled in class, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and Satyagraha are long and complicated. As we shall be watching only relatively short portions of each, you should be able to get what you need to know from the class itself. However, those wanting to read up in advance can find synopses by clicking the following links: Mahagonny and Satyagraha.