Bandanna is an English language opera in a prologue and two acts by Daron Hagen, first performed by the University of Texas at Austin opera theater in Austin, February 25, 1999. The libretto is by Irish poet Paul Muldoon based on a treatment co-written with the composer. It is Hagen's third opera, after Shining Brow, and Vera of Las Vegas. The story of the Venetian Moor is recast and updated to 1968 by combining elements of the original Venetian story, William Shakespeare's Othello, Giuseppe Verdi's opera Otello, and new, original characters and situations. The opera's unifying concept is the idea of the borderlines between emotional, metaphysical and moral states. The commission itself is notable for two reasons: first, it stipulated that there be no strings (other than the customary string basses associated with symphonic band) in the pit, second, it was financed by a consortium of over one hundred college bands from across the United States, all members of the College Band Directors National Association.

"Bandanna is neither fish nor fowl – as fierce as verismo but wrought with infinite care; a melding of church and cantina and Oxonian declamation," writes Tim Page. Catherine Parsonage expands upon this assessment: "[it] is wholly convincing as a modern opera, ranging stylistically from the music theatre of Gershwin, Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, to traditional mariachi music and contemporary opera of Benjamin Britten. Hagen, who served his apprenticeship on Broadway, acknowledges that holistically the piece falls between opera and musical theatre. Hagen's style encourages audiences to be actively involved in constructing their own meanings from the richness of the textual and musical cross-references in his work."