The concept of subjective identity and its expression in operas by Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942) is central to Sherry Denise Lee’s research entitled ‘Opera, Narrative, and the Modernist Crisis of Historical Subjectivity’.3 Lee’s thesis examines Theodor W. Adorno’s (1902-1969) assertion that modern works of art are dialectical expressions of the individual creative artist alienated within the workings of modern society. Lee draws on Adorno’s musical aesthetics, Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytical theories and on writers who have contributed to this concept. While having significant recourse to Adorno’s appraisal of these operas in his 1959 essays on Zemlinsky, Lee challenges Adorno’s views on both libretti and compositional style by examining both in terms of the issues of subjective identity, which they explore.