Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter, building on the theme of political evil and republican resistance, considers how the Republic of Love can operate in a concrete political project. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), among the composers this book considers, was the most politically involved in a practical way, a leading participant in the Italian Risorgimento. Though always writing in the context of historical events, he, like Mozart, explores republican struggles with a keen eye for the emotions that propel or, in some cases, doom them. A grave limitation in the optimistic Freemason Mozart is a failure to understand the human power of authoritarian religion, whether expressed in the weak and ridiculous Queen of the Night or the almost instantaneous victory of Idomeneo. Verdi’s Don Carlos (1867), set during a real-life uprising in sixteenth-century Flanders, shows how monarchs endure, and torment their people: by striking an alliance with the repressive force of the church and the Inquisition. In turn, the Inquisition preys on human weakness, guilt, and fear. In King Philippe’s guilty capitulation and in the ghastly auto-da-fé scene, we understand the way in which the “Republic of Love” is always pitted in a death struggle against the “Monarchy of Fear.”</jats:p>