In a 1950 essay, Heinz Politzer provided an on-the-spot evaluation of Menotti’s opera The Consul , which had debuted that year, first in Philadelphia and then in New York City. As a Kafka scholar, and a Jewish refugee from Vienna who naturalized as a US citizen, Politzer possessed strong credentials for assessing the opera’s portrayal of the tyranny of modern border control. His essay affirmed one of the central claims of David Armitage’s final Niemeyer lecture, “Refugee Songs,” that The Consul acutely illuminates the plight of the modern refugee, and thus provides a striking example of opera’s long-standing preoccupation with individuals caught up in international rules. According to Politzer, Menotti “has an authentic modern subject … worthy of serious treatment, and capable of evoking authentic emotion … the action is contemporary: we have lived through it … the struggle for a visa to the land of freedom, good life, redemption.” 1
Mira Siegelberg (Wed,) studied this question.