The Show Must Go On?

By the end of last week, it was still uncertain if the Deutsche Oper in Berlin would reschedule performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Idomeneo. The opera was originally canceled for fear of rioting--but not because of anything Mozart himself had written. In this latest production, director Hans Neuenfels features a scene including the decapitated heads of Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha, and Posei don--slightly ridiculous since the opera is set in ancient Crete.

As Roger Kimball explained in the Wall Street Journal, "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. . . . How do you spell 'anachronistic balderdash'?" Kimball goes on, "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."

THE SCRAPBOOK could not agree more. And if Mozart fans had wanted to riot, THE SCRAPBOOK would have suspended its usual law and order stance and been tempted to join them in storming the ramparts. But that was not the problem. Fearing potential reprisals from the Muslim community, and after local security officials warned of an "incalculable security risk," opera house director Kirsten Harms announced a change in the fall lineup, replacing Idomeneo with The Marriage of Figaro and La Traviata. (We would have really gotten a kick if they had replaced it with The Abduction

Chancellor Angela Merkel and other members of the Bundestag have condemned the preemptive capitulation to intimidation as craven. At a press conference in Washington last Tuesday, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was resolutely anti-capitulation, saying "we will not accept it." According to a Frankfurter Allgemeine online poll, a solid majority of Germans also consider the move to be an act of cowardice. And they're right.

But what Frau Harms needs to ponder is that while she may have escaped the wrath of radical Muslims, this sensitivity business could quickly get out of hand--as many famous operas are anti-clerical, anti-Muslim, and even anti-French. In the aforementioned La Traviata, for instance, Violetta, a Parisian courtesan, is unable to marry the man she loves because his father is too concerned with upholding his family's reputation. She then returns to her "protector" and, after a brief reunion with her true love, dies of tuberculosis.

Are the French going to take this lying down, as it were, and accept being portrayed as hookers, snobs, and pimps? THE SCRAPBOOK fears it is only a matter of time before the French issue a complaint--if not a fatwa--and the Deutsche Oper cancels Verdi.

Another Eminent Domain Outrage

Once upon a time, local governments could take your property only when they needed it for some public use. Then (thanks to the Supreme Court's Kelo decision) they were allowed to take your property because some other private party (i.e., a developer) promised to generate more tax revenues with it. Can they now take it just because they don't like the look of it? That's what the Washington state supreme court must decide.