Both Margaret Mikulska and Denis Fodor surely miss the point in claiming
(for diametrically opposed reasons) that Sellars' equivalence of sexual
harassment with the Count's 'droit de seigneur' was in some way a
'falsification' of Mozart and Da Ponte's original.

Margaret, rather oddly, claims that droit de seigneur didn't exist; but
it certainly does in the Count's mind, which is the point.  His behaviour
does not seem at all questionable to him, until he sees the effect it
has on other people.  Denis, equally doubtfully, claims that the 'droit'
did exist but that unlike modern sexual harassment it was politically
correct.  Well, yes - but only insofar as political correctness meant
anything in 18th c.  society, in other words only if you happened to be
a Count!

Now Sellars in his stimulating Trump Tower production claimed no such
equivalence - he allowed room for the audience and critics to recognise
something of it.  Neither, to go back to the libretto, did Da Ponte do
anything so bald and unsubtle as to have the Count justify his behaviour
towards Susanna by verbally quoting any such droit de seigneur (which
though it did not theoretically exist in law was certainly practised and
talked about often enough in feudal Europe, call it what you will.
Margaret's legal quibble is mere special pleading!)

Importantly, the droit de seigneur was very much up for debate as a
symbol of what was rotten in Beaumarchais' pre-revolutionary Paris in
much the same way as sexual harassment is part of social political debate
in modern America.  Both were (are) perceived by their critics as OK for
one class of society and one sex, provided it was kept decently quiet,
but not for others.  That's why the original play (toned down suitably
by Da Ponte for operatic consumption, though Mozart raised the emotional
stakes straight back up) was such a hot potato in its time.

It was the exposure of social issues through sexual conduct which made
it interesting and internationally celebrated; and in presenting the
opera clearly enough to allow us to recognise an equivalent, modern hot
potato, Sellars did the opera no violence whatsoever - quite the reverse.

Note: it was not Sellars who dragged in the comparison.  He simply
directed the piece intelligently and left it for us, the audience,
to make connections; and that's a good example of how the best 'modern'
productions work - not to mention showing how the musical fundamentalists
("I choose to interpret the production this way, and that's why it's
wrong") contrive to wag the dog with the tail!

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"