1. Backgrounds and Development: The New Musical Language and Its Correspondence with Psycho-Dramatic Principles of Symbolist Opera

2. The New Musical Language

3. Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the Unconscious

4. Pelléas et Mélisande: Polarity of Characterizations: Human Beings as Real-Life Individuals and Instruments of Fate

5. Pelléas et Mélisande: Fate and the Unconscious: Transformational Function of the Dominant Ninth Chord; Symbolism of Sonority

6. Pelléas et Mélisande: Musico-Dramatic Turning Point: Intervallic Expansion as Symbol of Dramatic Tension and Change of Mood

7. Pelléas et Mélisande: Melisande as Christ Symbol-Life, Death, and Resurrection-and Motivic Reinterpretations of the Whole-Tone Dyad

8. Pelléas et Mélisande: Circuity of Fate and Resolution of Mélisande's Dissonant Pentatonic-Whole-Tone Conflict

9. Duke Bluebeard's Castle: Psychological Motivation: Symbolic Interaction of Diatonic, Whole-Tone, and Chromatic Extremes

10. Duke Bluebeard's Castle: Toward Character Reversal: Reassignment of Pentatonic and Whole-Tone Spheres

11. Duke Bluebeard's Castle: The Nietzschean Condition and Polarity of Characterizations: Diatonic-Chromatic Extremes

12. Duke Bluebeard's Castle: Final Transformation and Retreat into Eternal Darkness: Synthesis of Pentatonic/Diatonic and Whole-Tone Spheres

13. Symbolism and Expressionism in Other Early Twentieth-Century Operas

Epilogue

Notes

Works Cited

Index