At the end of Act 1 of Richard Strauss’ 1919 opera “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (“The Woman Without a Shadow”), a poor woman putters about her dimly lit hovel preparing dinner for her husband, a dyer. No sooner have the fish begun to fry than she hears the hut fill with the sounds of her unborn children.

“Mother, mother, let us into the house!” they cry, unseen but palpably present. “The door is locked and we can’t get in.”

The Dyer’s Wife (in spite of being one of the opera’s most important characters, she has no other name) is horrified, because her reluctance to become a mother lies at the heart of her marital difficulties. In June, when “Frau” is scheduled to take the stage at the San Francisco Opera for the first time in more than 30 years, I imagine that many listeners will be horrified by this moment as well.

The idea that “the unborn” are in any sense people — individuals endowed with souls, desires and operatic voices — has always been an appalling misrepresentation. Today, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision stripping away decades’ worth of well-established abortion rights, “Frau” feels more problematic than ever.

It’s not as if the piece should be taken off the stage. Like every Strauss opera, “Frau” boasts a staggeringly beautiful score, full of lush orchestral writing, soaring vocalism and intricate harmonic working. It’s dramaturgically vibrant in other aspects.

The piece also has an eminent history at the San Francisco Opera, which is one reason it’s been scheduled as part of the company’s 2022-23 centennial season. It was one of the prominent 20th century works (along with Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites,” also slated for the coming season) to have its first U.S. production here, thanks to the visionary efforts of longtime former General Director Kurt Herbert Adler.

But “Frau” speaks to the current moment in the history of abortion more clearly than any other in the standard repertoire. And unfortunately, it stands on the wrong side of the issue.

The last time the San Francisco Opera produced “Frau,” in 1990, The Chronicle’s Robert Commanday was blunt in his assessment of the work’s politics.

“Amateur Freudians and Jungsters may explore the jungle of symbolisms about ‘the woman without a shadow’ at their pleasure,” he wrote, “But, at heart, it’s nothing more profound than an anti-choice statement idealizing the subservient, child-bearing role of women.”

In a 2004 review of a Los Angeles Opera production of “Frau,” L.A. Times critic Mark Swed described the opera as “pro-life” — which, in the most literal and connotation-free usage, is entirely accurate. Then a copy editor, in strict thrall to the paper’s usage guidelines, changed that term to “anti-abortion.”

“Frau” is not anti-abortion in any meaningful sense; the subject never arises explicitly. But the opera does rest on some of the same premises.

It’s not only the Act 1 ending that inspires a chill; the conclusion of the opera doubles down on this point. When the happy ending arrives — reuniting not only Barak the dyer and his wife but also a second married couple, the Emperor and the Empress, in connubial bliss — the chorus of unborn children makes a return appearance to join in the celebration.

They’re thrilled at the prospect of making the transition from the spectral region they’ve been inhabiting — a world, presumably, of pure potentiality — into an earthly life. In the opera’s cosmology, that transition has been blocked by the selfishness of their unwilling parents and is now open to them.

That conception isn’t just unfounded, it’s unnecessary as the basis for an exaltation of life and family (though it is, unfortunately, quite useful if the goal is to exert dominion over women and their bodies). One can easily celebrate the joys of parenthood, as “Frau” manifestly intends to do, without conjuring up disembodied homunculi who breathe a final sigh of relief: “Born at last!”

与许多其他问题,填补工作operatic repertoire, “Frau” represents a daunting challenge for a director. My attempts to reach Roy Rallo, the director of the upcoming San Francisco revival, to discuss his plans or his views on the piece’s sexual politics were unsuccessful. So we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out.

Complicating the discussion even further is the fact that for all its retrograde views on motherhood, “Frau” offers a rich and rewarding portrait of love and marriage.

歌词作者,施特劳斯的频繁的阿胶borator Hugo von Hoffmansthal, was frank about the fact that he modeled the relationship between Barak and his acerbic wife on the composer andhisacerbic wife. Strauss’ marriage, according to all contemporaneous accounts, was a constant tumult of reproach and reconciliation, squabbling and serenity, though built on a solid foundation of mutual devotion. In a good performance, those currents play out onstage in a touching way.

The Emperor and Empress, meanwhile, provide a vivid fairy-tale romance that is less human but equally affecting when skillfully rendered. (The Empress, in fact, is the title character, for plot reasons not worth delving into here.)

Those unborn children, though, remain a formidable sticking point, especially in our new post-Roe dystopia. One might be tempted to allow a certain poetic license here — after all, opera is a world in which statues, animals and the ghosts of the departed have all been known to raise their voices.

But those conceits have no political or social implications. Conferring personhood on the unborn does.