Missouri Classical Music News

The German Chancellor has joined the chorus of disapproval over an opera company's decision to cancel a Mozart opera production to avoid angering Muslims.

At the height Mozart's Idomeneo, the bloodstained King of Crete stumbles onstage and holds aloft the decapitated heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and the Prophet Muhammad. "The gods are dead!" he calls out to the audience.

Mindful of the violent outrage triggered by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet in Denmark, and of a warning by Berlin security officials that they could not guarantee the opera house’s security in the event of similar protests, the bosses of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin decided to cancel performances of the show in the German capital.