This work explores the relationship between opera and psychoanalysis. Ziezek and Dolar consider, for example, death in opera and orgasm (the little death for which opera may be imagined to be a substitution), as well as the heralded "death of opera" and its cultural function.

Opera's Second Death is a passionate exploration of opera - the genre, its masterpieces, and the nature of death. Using a dazzling array of tools, Slavoj Zizek and coauthor Mladen Dolar explore the strange compulsions that overpower characters in Mozart and Wagner, as well as our own desires to die and to go to the opera.