Appeasement at the Opera
Mozart falls victim to fear of Muslim rage.
BY ROGER KIMBALL
Thursday, September 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
About the only thing less pleasing than having to sit through Hans Neuenfels's production of Mozart's 1781 opera "Idomeneo" is the news that Berlin's Deutsche Oper, citing an "incalculable" security risk from enraged Muslims, has decided to cancel its scheduled showing of the piece.
Don't get me wrong. I am certain that the production, which premiered in 2003, is a horror. In Mozart's version, the opera, set on Crete in the aftermath of the Trojan War, is a play about sacrifice and reconciliation. The opera ends with King Idomeneo issuing a "last command. I announce peace," before ceding power to his son.
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"?
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.
In the best of all possible worlds, we wouldn't be treated to such artistic desecrations. But in this world, such productions are business as usual. And Deutsche Oper's decision to cancel the production because some Muslims might not like it is both craven and shortsighted.
Not, I hasten to add, that Deutsche Oper was wrong in its calculation that the opera will offend those Muslims who are eagerly waiting to be offended. A year ago, the world saw what could happen when a hapless Danish newspaper printed some caricatures of Muhammad. Inflamed partisans of the religion of peace got to work torching Danish embassies and organizing a boycott to damage the Danish economy.
Doubtless officials at Deutsche Oper also remembered what happened earlier this month in Germany when Pope Benedict, in the course of an academic address about faith and reason, had the temerity to quote a 14th-century emperor who had some tart things to say about the legacy of Muhammad. As of this writing, the pope's words have led to the trashing of at least six churches in the Middle East, the murder of a nun and her bodyguard in Somalia, and countless angry protests and calls for the execution of the pope.
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.
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.
Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin, was right when he took issue with Deutsche Oper's decision to cancel Mr. Neuenfels's "Idomeneo." While acknowledging the legitimate concerns about security, Mr. Wowereit nonetheless insisted that "Our ideas about openness, tolerance and freedom must be lived on the offensive. Voluntary self-limitation gives those who fight against our values a confirmation in advance that we will not stand behind them."
Quite right. Today it was Mozart. Tomorrow perhaps it will be Shakespeare. Or Dante, who after all has a pretty hot place reserved for Muhammad in "The Divine Comedy." It is not--not yet--too late to put a stop to our habit of appeasing a murderous fanaticism that demands privileges and indulgences it refuses to grant to others.
The spectacle of Deutsche Oper's decision to cancel "Idomeneo" suggests that the West's dealings with Islam have entered a new phase. Yesterday, we waited until after the Muslims took to the streets before capitulating; today, it appears we have moved on to pre-emptive capitulation.
Where will it end? I suppose that depends on how much we really care about the liberty and freedom we champion with words. Freedom, as some wit observed, is not free. Will we have the gumption to pay the cost? The jury is still out on that question. I hope and pray that the answer will be yes. "There is," G.K. Chesterton noted nearly 100 years ago, "a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped."
Mr. Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion.
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