Mr. Neuenfels's version is Modern German--i.e., gratuitously offensive. It is more Neuenfels than Mozart. Instead of appearing as the harbinger of peace, Idomeneo ends the opera parading the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and the Prophet Muhammad. How do you spell "anachronistic balderdash"?The production -- which has already been seen, back in 2003 -- seems to be a desecration of Mozart and quite hostile to three religions -- four if anyone's still into Poseidon -- but Deutsche Oper has cancelled the production specifically out of concern for how it will affect Muslims.
Poor Mozart. Mr. Neuenfels is one of those directors more interested in nurturing his own pathologies than in offering a faithful presentation of the geniuses with whose work he has been entrusted.
There is a certain irony in all this. Our avant-gardist artistic establishment preens itself on being "transgressive," "challenging," "provocative," etc. But it prefers to exercise its anti-bourgeois animus within the coddled purlieus of bourgeois security. It has discovered that there is a big difference between exhibiting photographs of Christ on the cross in a bottle of urine or Madonna having herself "crucified" on her current concert tour and poking fun at Muhammad. The former earns you the delicious obloquy of the Catholic establishment while shoring up your credentials as a brave artistic and moral pioneer. The latter sends murderous hordes into the streets looking for something, or someone, to destroy.This is a complex problem. Neuenfels's production takes the easy faux-daring route of "Piss Christ" and the Madonna crucifixion, but at least he had the nerve to hit all religions equality, and not to single out one religion. Perhaps he did that because it wouldn't have made any sense to go after the conventional target of Christianity when it's an opera about the Trojan War. It doesn't make all that much sense to drag Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad into that setting either, but bringing them all in to join their super best friend Poseidon made some kind of crazy sense.
There are plenty of good reasons to refrain from gratuitously insulting other people's religions. For one thing, it is bad manners. One should respect what is respectable in the habits, mores and beliefs of other people.
But this does not mean that we should allow ourselves to be blackmailed by militant fanatics who shelter under the authority of religion and employ the freedoms of Western democracy to attack and undermine those very freedoms.
Now that some Muslims have made it painfully obvious that religion-taunting is not an easy game anymore, abandoning it expresses fear, not respect for religion. And continuing to disrespect the religions that don't lash back only highlights that cowardice. Poor transgressive rebel artists! How are they to shock the middle class anymore?
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Actually, I think Buddhists might have found it humorous... as in, "if you meet the Buddha on the road to a Mozart opera..."
Operagoers have had to suffer through these "transgressive" productions for over a decade. I recall a staging of Verdi's "Macbeth" in which the Witches wore chartreuse nurse's uniforms and Lady M.'s sleepwalking scene was done on a 60s-style orange vinyl settee.
To be fair to the directors, the production style is not solely geared to shocking the bourgeois. The staple opera repertory consists of 18th and 19th century pieces which are done over and over again. Directors have to rack their brains to come up with new and interesting takes.
But it's outrageous that even the most witless Eurotrash production should be cancelled for the reasons given here.
While I like my politics moderate, I like my fine arts conservative.
I'm part of that dull mainstream that likes Shakespeare w/o new scenes added, and prefers Eine Kleine Nacht Musik to avant garde clanging and shrieks. Oh, and who thinks Janis Joplin was a lot better than Madonna.
I know it doesn't allow for a demonstration of their full "artistic" talents, but companies would be better off trying to faithfully perform a classic, than to "reinterpret" it.
As for the politics of this, I would not have gone to this trash, I would not have supported the creation of that trash, but having scheduled it, I would resist weakening freedom of speech by canceling it.
That somebody in Louisana pissed off Poseidon last year is more apparent then all the 'Second Coming' balderdash that's shoveled at us!
Or maybe Poseidon just wanted a new FEMA director!
Like brave Kenye West dressed as Jesus on the cover of Rolling Stone a few months back. As Glenn Reynolds said at the time "If Kanye West had balls, he'd pose as Mohammed, instead of Jesus. But he doesn't. Efforts to be controversial have become so predictable. Yawn."
Oh, and ron: LOL.
Unsurprising. There is very little the Left, artistic or not, will not concede to the militant Islamic fascists to be "safe." Over time even the Left might recognize the danger their reflexive habit produces, but probably too late to make them safe.
With all this dumping on the production, does anyone know whether the singers were any good? Idomeneo is hard to cast, and harder to sign. I'd sit through a lot of Eurotrash production nonsense if the singers and the conductor were any good. (Anyone who enjoys Wagner has been doing that for years.)
To me, the only interesting aspect of this story is that the production was cancelled for all the wrong reasons. And without even a direct threat from the usual Islamocrazies. Instead, it was entirely a German exercise in self censorship -- the fear and intimidation are now all internalized, and can work their wonderful magic on their own, without further external stimulus.
Ann asks how the "[p]oor transgressive rebel artists [can still] shock the middle class anymore?" Well, this demonstration of the extent to which the self-regarding Western artistic avant garde has neutered itself is a bit shocking. Normally, given their interest in image for its own sake, you would think they might have disguised that reality a bit better. It's also a pretty pathetic contrast to the Dutch cartoonists, to boot.
Exactly! I was bitching on this about Everclear and Madonna.
Artists like these will - for a buck - absolutely wipe their backsides with anything that people hold sacred, provided of course that they'll suffer no real danger.
Fenrisulven, fraud is the blood and breath of the arts. I am a painter, and my training was originally in the Theatre Arts in the late '70s and early '80s. Even then, the leftist hegemony over the arts was amazing. The real scarlet letters were branded on those who did not subscribe to the group-think.
It has only gotten worse. For as long as the intelligencia worship the likes of chocolate covered Karen Finley and Andres Serrano, they will continue to have less and less to do with real civilization.
We fear Islamists even while living under the protection of powerful western law-and-order system. So,
Don't try free speech at home.
We're talking low stakes poker here.
I am reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry visits a Catholic priest to bemoan another comedian's questionable conversion to Judaism. ("'He converted to Judaism purely for the jokes' … 'And this offends you, as a Jew?' … 'No. It offends me as a comedian.'")
Madonna's crucifiction schtick smacks more of unintended self-parody than serious provocation. If she really wants to break new ground she might try inserting a bacon bookmark into a copy of the Koran in front of a live audience in Iran.
The only question is why they think they are brave in doing so?
They have a whole community of people reinforcing the idea that it is, and patting them on the back for it. The media does it, other "artists" do it, and certainly many on the left still think it's edgy to insult the religions without terrorist wings.
Richard Dolan is exactly right about Idomeneo and Wagner. I have found myself averting my eyes in many modern opera productions. But good music can transcend the excesses of the idiots who often preside over the theatre. With good singing and a solid orchestra, it's still hard to completely ruin Wagner.
It's also hard to ruin Mozart, but in different ways. Mozart is obviously more fragile but also subtle. His music is rather hard to perform, and if you don't do it right, it's glaringly obvious. That puts constraints on the worst excesses. I don't know anything about this production, but given that Idomeneo is difficult to bring off, and, in my opinion, the least satisfactory of Mozart's "great" operas, it's probably no great loss that it was cancelled.
It is, of course, a terrible loss to artistic freedom, as commenters have noted. Freedom of expression is one of the core values of Western civilization, and has been, to one degree or another, for a long time. Mozart himself certainly pushed the envelope with Figaro. And in even more difficult territory, Don Giovanni deals with some of the deepest and most troublesome themes ever done in the theatre. In my opinion, there is more to be learned about rape from Don Giovanni than a bookshelf of feminist tracts.
Mozart did these difficult things not by being in the faces of the audience in the modern manner, but by creating art that respected most of the social conventions of the day. But behind the fancy-dress facade there was content of the deepest kind. Tension between the manner and the content is often integral to great art. To attempt to make the expression match an idea of the meaning is to deflate the art utterly.
Offending bourgeois social convention became more and more fashionable as the 19th century drew to a close, culminating in the famous 1913 production of Stravinsky's Sacre du printemps in Paris. Speaking of artistic courage, eveyone expected trouble, but Pierre Monteaux stood to his podium, and the musicians played, and the dancers danced while the theatre erupted. But it was a riot in the droll French manner ("un docteur!...deux doctuers!!....un dentist!"). The reason modern performers flee is that the riots they expect will not be so amusing.
Fen,
You are right about Sorkin and the other Hollow Men of Hollywood. From Gilmore Girls to Studio 60, TV and movies are rife with jabs at Christians, Bush (by name), and America as their world view admits of no cause of conflict other than our tradition. Sad, boring Studio 60 proves their desperation to avoid the obvious threat to freedom which fellow artist Theo Van Gogh knew only too well.
I watch Brothers and Sisters, if only because I await with morbid fascination the conservative sister's first radio broadcast. It ought to be a corker.
Can transgressive artists still shock the middle class? I don't think so. The middle class is frankly bored with their "creative" self-expression and has come to view them as dysfunctional personalities much like those lost and pathetic creatures who inhabited Andy Warhol's Factory.
No, transgressive artists are going to have to find a new social class to shock. And the only real target out there now is the left wing verbal class. Here's where the future of transgressive art lies.
Jack,
No, transgressive artists are going to have to find a new social class to shock.
I assume you mean tame social classes that won't cut your head off.
Cuz it's pretty easy to shock 1.5 billion Muslims with lot's of message laden artistic activities.
It would be educational for all parties, artists, Muslims and the media.
"transgressive artists are going to have to find a new social class to shock."
Why not let that new social class be intolerant Muslims and their enablers on the Left? After a century of nonstop "transgressive" art with Christianity as its target, the result is that nobody gives it a thought. With lots and lots of practice, Muslims may become almost as anesthetized. Unfortunately there may be quite a body count before we reach that point.
Equally deserving the "transgressive" treatment are academic leftists. They're not known for their rollicking sense of give and take when the joke's at their expense.
Poor Mozart. Mr. Neuenfels is one of those directors more interested in nurturing his own pathologies than in offering a faithful presentation of the geniuses with whose work he has been entrusted.
Germans make an absolute fetish of challenging their past (see Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's "Hitler: A Film From Germany", not to mention his own operatic interpretations), and being as outré as humanly possible, the better to disinfect themselves from National Socialism.
TJL wrote:
Operagoers have had to suffer through these "transgressive" productions for over a decade. I recall a staging of Verdi's "Macbeth" in which the Witches wore chartreuse nurse's uniforms and Lady M.'s sleepwalking scene was done on a 60s-style orange vinyl settee.
Heh.
As I mentioned in my own blogpiece about the topic, I once attended a showing of Gerald Thomas' (a British-Brazilian opera director) take on The Flying Dutchman, when I was just a kid, spending the summer in Rio de Janeiro.
His "vision", like Mr. Neuenfels, consisted of making the Dutchman characters dress up as Nazis, and infusing the whole production with a kind of Wagnerian Aryan hommage, obviously to mock Wagner's precursive Nazism.
Thanks to XWL, for making me aware of the Althouse take on this brouhaha!
Cheers,
Victoria
Holy crap, it's Victoria!
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