Allying with music, resorting to the old fables and the conventions of theater, poetry has invented a new space of fiction: opera. All the figures of desire and passional loss can be interpreted and derailed in it. Also all the authorities can be questioned. The sorceresses have under their control the heroes that they have led astray. However, his triumph is not lasting. They are the incarnations of art that multiplies pleasures and that also knows to what extent its sovereignty is precarious. Listening to the sorceresses, Jean Starobinski goes to meet some listeners of restless demand: Rousseau, Stendhal, Hoffmann, Balzar and Nietzsche. From his readings, the author returns loaded with enlightening intellectual discoveries. And some problems.