Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Moving from the clash between the Republic of Love and the Monarchy of Fear, this chapter considers the more subtle oppression of social ostracization, a category unexplored by Mozart. All republics have “internal exiles,” people excluded because they are somehow different. Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) was drawn to the topic through his own triple outcast identity—as an artist, a pacifist, and a gay man. He created a series of memorable portraits of the social outcast, including Peter Grimes (1945). Britten knows that even people living in a republic and secure in their own liberties will almost gratuitously take it on themselves to hate and persecute others. The chapter’s discussion of Britten ends with a study of the very Mozartean comic opera Albert Herring (1947), which shows a society learning its way beyond repression and persecution. The chapter turns to the opera Jenůfa (1904), by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928). The story depicts the heroine’s premarital affair with an unreliable suitor, Števa, who then jilts her for a wealthy bride, leaving her pregnant. The opera, tragic and emotionally complex, offers an ending of hopeful love, pointing forward toward a future in which sexual shame and inequality will less often deform human lives.</jats:p>