ABSTRACT
W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman were quite unabashed about their artistic aims in The Bassarids; for them, the libretto was a self-sufficient creation in its own right. Auden even managed to persuade Hans Werner Henze that The Bassarids should be subtitled 'Opera Seria with Intermezzo in One Act', and it is so styled on the title page in the first editions of score and libretto. However, by a remarkable costume-change the chorus become totally contemporary figures at the close of the opera. The chorus of Bassarids begin the opera as a neo-classical image of Greece, 'in perfect, somewhat lifeless symmetry, wearing with a certain stiffness the traditional white draperies of a generalized classical Antiquity'. The expressiveness, and the coherence, of the music for The Bassarids do not depend on forms derived from abstract music but on 'the relationship of theme, rhythm and sound-effect to the dramatic content.
