Guardian Leader: In praise of ... Idomeneo

In praise of ... Idomeneo
Leader
Thursday September 28, 2006
The Guardian

Hard on the heels of the row over the Pope's comments about Islam, a Berlin opera house has triggered another debate about where the boundaries between free speech and multicultural sensitivities should lie. The Deutsche Oper's decision to cancel its production of Mozart's Idomeneo for fear of causing offence to Muslims is simultaneously understandable and reprehensible. The immediate issue, the brandishing of the severed head of Muhammad, is obviously a provocative act - as are the simultaneous brandishings of the heads of Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon.

But the cancellation is also a dangerous act of self-censorship at odds with the principles of liberal democracy and artistic expression, as chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday. Amid the turmoil, it is worth stressing that none of this is the responsibility of Idomeneo's composer. Mozart never wrote any such scene as the one that has caused the current furore. The line "The gods are dead" that apparently accompanies it is not in the Abbé Varesco's libretto either.

These things are anachronisms from the mind of the show's director, Hans Neuenfels, and are arguably at odds with the reconciliation between heaven and earth that marks the opera's final scene. There are bigger issues at stake in this row than fidelity to Mozart, but it would be a shame if the blameless composer's first indisputable theatrical masterpiece was to acquire a controversial reputation merely because of the misdirected ego of a 21st-century director.

ドイチェオパー・ベルリン「イドメネオ」、治安理由にキャンセル