Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> writes, in support of Sellars's
aggiorniamento of  Mozart's _ Nozze_:

>Is "iusprimae noctis" Latin for "droit du seigneur?" If so, I contend
>that it's precisely for that reason that the Sellars staging in the
>Trump Towers works.  "Droit du seigneur" is something a modern American
>doesn't quite comprehend.  Sexual harrassment is.

In trying to understand a problem of history philosophers who
have grappled with this problem, Leo Strauss is a good modern exemplar,
often recommend a very close reading of the material, and if that,
alone, doesn't do it, then to proceed to a study of its historical
environment.  Once one is satisfied that one has an understanding,
only then may one attempt a comment from the point of view of the present.
What is wrong with Sellars's reading of Nozze, at least as Schwartzo
renders it, is that, right off, sexual harrassment today is considered
politically incorrect, while the droit de seigneur, in its time, was
considered politically correct.  Thus we're dealing here not with an
acceptable translation of the composer's drift of meaning but with a
falsification of it.  It's this kind of thing that continually mars
Regieoper.  I think I feel this even more keenly than Margaret Mikulska
seem to.

Denis Fodor