In Death in Venice, Britten established a relationship between homosexuality and exoticism (Taruskin 256). The issue of homosexuality as depicted in “Death in Venice” is implicitly labeled. In his early years, Britten composed music for films; this experience had shaped his style by teaching him to communicate through music, making him become a composer who used music to express allegorical pleas for tolerance and his pacifism (Burkholder, Graut, and Palisca 928). As a homosexual, Britten had intentions to use music to deliver his concern about …show more content…
Carmen is a fictional character and the heroine of Bizet’s opera, who represents a lot of labels including seductive, sex addicted and obsessed with death as well as liberal (Frisch 172). The story represents a battle of the sexes. Carmen’s music is exotic and sexy, intensifying the Gamelan themes of sexual and exotic as represented by the gypsy music. Bizet clearly used his music to label a group of people as violent. Unlike Bizet’s music which directly labels Carmen as an “other,” Britten’s music falls on the spectrum of pure exoticism through directly presenting Aschenbach as