A survey of European trends and works suggests that the extent to which operatic modernism resists the pull of ideology may well depend on two factors: the post-Wagnerian recuperation of the primacy of voice and the proclivity of modernist operatic texts and music to engage (rather than repress) nostalgia. One work not usually included in modernist canons, Erich Korngold's Die Tote Stadt , presents an interesting model.