Who Will Defend Mozart?
The fracas over the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s cancellation of Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo,” produced this interesting factoid in the New York Times (9/27/06).
The bloody head of Muhammad brought on stage at the end of the opera is accompanied by the heads of Jesus, Buddha, and Poseidon. Could Mozart have ever written such an ending? (I have never seen Idomeneo, though it’s being produced at the Met this season). No, he could not and did not!
The bloody ending is new. It was introduced in a 2003 production by Hans Neuenfels, described by a colleague as “a secularist who does not believe religion solves the problems of the world.” Mr. Neuenfels’ agent said in the Times story, “you couldn’t chage [the ending]; it is part of the story.”
Well, apparently you can change the ending–as long as it was written by Mozart.
Tags: Deutsche Oper Berlin
This just goes to support my long held belief that in the debate between religion and secularism we actually need three conceptual categories; religious, secular, and just plain stupid.
I happen to disagree with Hans Neuenfels’ philosophy of life, but that is immaterial. The scene he introduces is an imposition on the audience and distorts the work of the great composer, who does very well without it. If Neuenfels wishes to advocate his views on the stage, let him compose his own opera or find some other medium suitable to his talents, but let him leave Mozart alone. If he cannot produce a work of his own, let him be silent
Should we expect to hear claims of “artistic freedom” here–at least for the living if not the dead.
Rather further from the capitals of sophistication (or cultural highjacking, depending on your perspective) the Astoria (Oregon) Mozart Festival last spring presented a concert entitled “Mozart and the Islamic World,” with (I believe) an associated lecture or panel. Now I’m even sorrier I had to leave town rather than attend.
In point of fact Mozart and Haydn were fascinated with contemporary Islamic culture, but I know absolutely nothing just what they and their contemporaries knew and what Islam meant for them. I do suspect they had a rather more eirenaic view than most in the West have had since various age old hatreds were invented in the 19th century.
Gene:
The title Abduction from the Seraglio comes to mind, but I have no idea about the plot except for what might be inferred from the title.
Not to go on a tangent, but it is my understanding that the use of cymbals and triangles (in Haydn’s London Symphonies, for instance) and certain rhythmic innovations (as in why the rondo is called a la turca) came from Eastern military music, which would have been very familiar in the Hapsburg empire.
Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail has, in addition to “Turkish” music, a sort of universalist humanist plot like the Magic Flute (also set in the Islamic World) in which the Pasha who seems to embody Eastern barbarism turns out to be more humane than the hero’s father when put to the test. Sort of like the Buchan plot where the establishment types with their cheap anti-Semitic comments come to realize the Jew in their midst is a better man than they are.
Again, how much Mozart or Haydn knew about the realities of Islam is beyond me. I like to think it’s a little more than the Shriners do, but maybe not.
Unfortunately world seems to be full of operatic directors (and Germany apparently has the most) who think they know, better than did the composers and librettists, what operas are about. And, unfortunately, they come up with cheap and self-glorifying productions. Neuenfels’s version of Idomeneo seems to be one of them, but he’s not alone.
Some years ago I found myself on a plane next to an American baritone living in Switzerland and sang in a lot of German houses; he told me of one production of the Magic Flute where he sang Sarastro’s “In diesen heiligen Hallen” — one of the only pieces of music, G.B. Shaw once remarked, that could be put in the mouth of God without blasphemy — dressed in an SS uniform and standing on a pile of skulls.
Though I love opera on DVD, I no longer buy the stuff without checking it out first, ever since being landed with a German production of Weber’s Freischuetz in which Agathe seemed to be (it was a bit hard to tell) a prostitute, which makes absolutely no sense to the story or the music.
There was a great fascination with the Islamic (or at least Turkish) world in Mozart’s day (after all, only a century earlier, the Turks had laid siege to Vienna and (so the quite historically inaccurate story goes) leaving behind them, when they were driven away in 1685, quantities of coffee, thus stimulating the foundation of the Viennnese coffee house). The Abduction reflects this fascination, and it crops up in other pieces as well, notably in the Rondo alla Turca which finishes off the A maj. piano sonata.
Rossini carried on the interest, in pieces like L’Italiana in Algeri, and Il Turco in Italia.
Nicholas Clifford:
Exactly right!
Here’s the great question: How is the rerendering/reinterpreting of Mozart or Shakespeare or Ibsen, etc., not a matter of freedom of speech? Directors/producers feel free to make free.
The “marketing” of the classics to ever larger audiences seems to come along with the effort to make a “classic” more relevant or more shocking with the effects that we see.
As someone who has never read the “original” score or oratorio of “The Magic Flute,” or of “The Dialogue of the Carmelites” (both operas I have admired in some productions and found wanting int others), it is confoudning to have a view on the “marketing” question. Perhaps operas are more susceptible to “marketing” than plays (which we can simply read and know). But honestly it was only the improbability of Mohammed’s head delivered on the stage that made me wonder about the German production, an improbabilty confirmed in the NYT’s story.
Maybe long-time fans of “re-productions” of Shakespeare, Mozart, etc. have something to contribute here.