Henze - La Cubana

"La Cubana" is (nothing but) a vaudeville, and the music for it makes no contribution to the problem of worker's music: from a certain point of view it is 'élitist' (cum grano salis). The standpoint from which I wrote the music is, however, not free from grim dialectic, which perhaps does not matter, as long as listening to and seeing the whole piece is pleasurable. But you should not rank this music with attempts to create art that can be employed in the class struggle. It makes no such claims, it is not so conceived and in any case that kind of thing would be out of place in a vaudeville. (Hans Werner Henze).