The Deutsche Oper Berlin announced the cancellation of its performance of Mozart's 1781 opera "Idomeneo" two weeks ago, just a few weeks before the start of the fall season. Citing security concerns and an anonymous phone call, the opera company's decision was based on a controversial closing scene featuring four severed heads of religious icons, including Muhammad.
This particular staging of the opera premiered at the Deutsche Oper in 2003 without significant backlash, though this season's staging is infused by lasting tension due to the Danish newspaper cartoons of Muhammad and heightened sensitivity amongst the Islamic community in Europe. The Deutsche Oper Berlin's decision to cancel the opera has caused a significant outcry over free speech and artistic liberties in democratic societies.
To address the impact of this decision, the Daily picks up the conversation with Tufts lecturer Alessandra Campana, a musicologist and an opera expert.
Q: How do we continue to perform Mozart's works, a huge name in the classical music canon, in modern times with modern political and even security considerations?
AC: The basic question is: What kind of significance does this opera have nowadays? What [Hans Neuenfels, director of "Idomeneo" at the Deutsche Oper] does is, at the very end of the opera, he puts Idomeneo on the stage with these four chairs, and Idomeneo comes out and puts the severed heads of Neptune, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad [on the chairs]. What we see is the historic gods, in a way. It's a strong gesture, asking, "What are we to get out of this opera which has to do with religion and God?" It's a very delicate issue.
Q: Can we allow directors like Hans Neuenfels, who pushes the political envelope, to use Mozart's art as a vehicle for a statement about free speech?
AC: Operas and theaters are themselves stages for politics, especially cultural politics. What kind of cultural politics are we doing right now? And which role do we ascribe to art? Is art for entertainment and appeasing the senses? Or do we ascribe to art the role of reawakening our ability to find strategies for reconciliation in a world that seems to be so anxious about conflicts?
Most of these artists probably had the best of intentions as far as reworking and rethinking these works. Opera is performance; it's not just a static product that ends once it's created. A director like Neuenfels tries to make the opera relevant every time it's staged.
Q: How do we perform major works from the artistic canon - works that may offend - when, increasingly, everything today offends?
AC: Something that has emerged from this debate over the decision to cancel the opera is the question of self-censorship. In general, the choices the performer makes have to do with what kind of audience he has. Who is the audience at the Deutsche Oper? Who goes to the opera? Who buys the ticket? Is Neuenfels speaking to an audience who is able to understand what he is doing? Might they not be offended? In that case, why should he be silenced? If that is not the case, we should probably ask him to change his staging, unless those he is offending are put in the condition to respond, to engage with and discuss his reading of the opera.
Another issue is, if you want art to have political content - and it does anyway - perhaps we should think about being more than passive spectators, meaning [we] ought to be critical. And perhaps it is useful from time to time to have these little shocks in order to revise our attitudes as spectators.
Media like television tends to put us on a comfortable couch. If we change the medium, perhaps we will make sense of our role as more active viewers who demand a say in what we watch instead of just accepting everything.
