Robert Peters wrote:

>2) The operas libretto is openly racist and misogynous.  I am no regualar
>guest in opera houses.  How do modern productions deal with these
>tendencies of the libretto? Thanks for any hints,

The production Opera Australia presented in Melbourne last year had an
oily, sleazy looking "white" Monastatos - capturing the unsavouriness in
the character without connecting it with any racial stereotype.  I have
also seen, in the past, Monastatos played in blackface, and at least
half-way for laughs.

Decisions must be made.  Do we hide what was in the original from
contempory audiences for fear of offending?...Do we do what the composer
and librettist wrote because that's what they wrote? Do we think the
Purpose of theatre is something different from or broader that that?
(Do I smell a whiff of some aspects of the...  sshhh ....repeats debate?)

Helen Duggan