Posted on 07/31/2007 10:35:17 AM PDT by mojito
Mozart’s lighthearted opera The Abduction from the Seraglio does not call for a prostitute’s nipples to be sliced off and presented to the lead soprano. Nor does it include masturbation, urination as foreplay, or forced oral sex. Europe’s new breed of opera directors, however, know better than Mozart what an opera should contain. So not only does the Abduction at Berlin’s Komische Oper feature the aforementioned activities; it also replaces Mozart’s graceful ending with a Quentin Tarantino–esque bloodbath and the promise of future perversion.
Welcome to Regietheater (German for “director’s theater”), the style of opera direction now prevalent in Europe. Regietheater embodies the belief that a director’s interpretation of an opera is as important as what the composer intended, if not more so. By an odd coincidence, many cutting-edge directors working in Europe today just happen to discover the identical lode of sex, violence, and opportunity for hackneyed political “critique” in operas ranging from the early Baroque era to that of late Romanticism.
Until now, New York’s Metropolitan Opera has stood resolutely against Regietheater decadence. In fact, its greatest gift to the world at the present moment is to mount productions—whether sleekly abstract or richly realistic—that allow the beauty of some of the most powerful music ever written to shine forth.
The question now is whether that musical gift will continue.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
My God, but these Europeans are sophisticated, aren’t they!!!
We’re just American prudes, you know...
In the case of this particular opera, the homosexuality of the producers and directors (with its seriously f***ed up attitude towards women and sex) finds an ideal target for artistic perversion.
Very similar, indeed, to the situation in High Fashion.
I am just a mere peasant. I live far away from where high opera can be produced and if I lived near, could never afford to be a subscriber or patron. I will have to settle for merely listening to opera. And what a pleasure that can be. Two nights ago I listened to Tristan and Isolde in its entirity. With CD’s great opera can be accessible to the masses and there are recordings by conductors and singers that probably cannot be matched by this generation of artists.
As a Mozart lover I am almost beyond words...I’m so upset by this!
The Met is unlikely to go this route for a number of reasons:
1. The Met seats 4000 people and needs to fill those seats nightly to break even because...
2. Around half of the Mets revenue comes from ticket sales.
3. The Met receives less than 1% of it's operating budget from the National Endowment for the Arts.
4. The other 50% of the Met's revenue comes from Corporate and private sponsors who would pull their money in heartbeat if the Met employed one of these no-talents to stage a production.
5. The Met also derives revenue from renting entire productions to other opera companies. Sado-masochistic filth is not popular at regional companies.
Heck, the Met is struggling to find a sponsor to keep the famous Saturday afternoon broadcasts funded. They cannot afford the kind of responses that these stagings bring, even if the idiot Europeans are willing to put up with them.
The decadent excretions of a moribund culture.
No, apparently the elite government bureaucrats can endure perversions indefinitely.
Damn right they know better. Mozart is just aother DWEM. Traditional productions of Mozart promote eurocentric, christian, patriarchial, homophobic themes.
I wonder how many more pages of this I'd have to write to make an A in a course at an Ivy League university?
Not sure. But, if it was at Ward Churchill's now defunct alma mater, that would be enough.
Figures that just when my wife and I started enjoying getting fancied up (defined as my wife in alexandrite and me having washed my face and combed my hair) they’d drag opera into the filth as well.
As other posters have noted, these "trashy productions of trendy nihilists" depend on regular infusions of taxpayer money.
This is yet another argument against government funding of the arts and education.
Writing this must have been like reviewing the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog for the church ladies; reading it was like suddenly learning that Playboy magazine is now printed only in braille.
I’ve always thought that going to the Opera made as much sense as taking out the garbage in a tuxedo.
True. Perhaps a more honest production would have Konstanze and Blondchen in burqas and remaining silent, Osmin dragging a pre-pubescent boy into his tent and Belmonte and Pedrillo beheaded by Pasha Selim before he blows himself up at the entrance to the American Embassy.
Reviews:
"Uplifting and inspiring..." - The Nation
"A delightful frolic!" - CAIR
"How can I get into that tent?" - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
Not sure. But, if it was at Ward Churchill’s now defunct alma mater, that would be enough.
One good thing about Ward Churchill’s former employer is that they have a good opera program with beautiful and traditional stagings. The good thing is that they have not made the College of Music a political entity (yet).
Mozart DID have a bit of difficulty “selling” Abduction because a harem was considered a brothel.
YOU are right.
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