As Steve says, the Count uses his power in society to manipulate and harass
-  so it ever was and alas, shall be.  Droit du seigneur was a
medieval custom, certainly not common in the eighteenth century.  Here we have Mozart using a coded device to express a theme.  The opera
was performed in contemporary dress, not medieval costume.  Maybe Mozart misunderstood the libretto, but da Ponte was a rogue who made
telling comments on society, which the audience picked up on with delight -
 those were interesting times when authoritarianism was being
questioned, and the secret police could drag you away if you were too overt.  I could discuss the Armani suits in Gotterdammerung, but that
would take too long given the deep roots in Wagner's philosophy, history, musical symbolism etc. and most people don't care.  If a Universal
Theme jumped up and waved a crib note saying "this is what I mean!" it would make no difference, I suspect.

Great art works on so many different levels that we only limit
ourselves if we focus on only a small part.  Of course we can take
the line that something means "just" what's on the surface, but we'd
be missing out on a whole lot more.  When we look at Picasso's Woman
Crying, do we think, "Gosh, the nose is too pointy, the profile is wrong"?
Thinking about great works and interpreting them is no passing novelty:
it is what creativity is all about.  Good work doesn't collapse under
the pressure of interpretation.  Every performer puts something of
themselves into their work.  Artists throughout time have been creating
something new with eternal ideas - look at our Xmas cards - all those
different takes on Madonna and Child.  In theatre it has been a tradition
for hundreds of years - witness the continuous debate on Shakespeare
performance practice.  In opera, innovation was certainly not unknown,
and there were many different styles and traditions.  Even in a limited
time scale and genre, we have evidence that for creative artists, a
personal response to understanding mattered.  Gustav Mahler, for example,
in 1905, encouraged Alfred Roller to open out Wagner, creating sets that
illuminated the meaning: the Ride of the Valkyries, for example was
staged with lights and projections, not heavy mechanical sets and horses
Nor can theatre today turn its back on nearly eighty years of Brecht,
and other playwrights.  The twentieth century with its insights from
psychoanalysis, and individualism, has influenced the arts to respond
with a greater emphasis on trying to understand and develop meaning.
This is no temporary phase: it goes straight to the heart of what
creativity is about.  Creative art has always attracted controversy.

Perhaps opera is a different genre, unlike music, theatre, art, philosophy.
Perhaps it carries baggage other than the purely artistic.  We need also
to think about the sociology of opera, what it means to its audiences,
who its audiences are, who its artists are, social assumptions, different
cultural traditions in the US and Europe, all nebulous things that don't
provide easy answers.  Of course it is possible to enjoy the genre without
relating to opera history, or wider cultural movements.  Opera has never
been the exclusive province of intellectuals, - far from it.  Nobody
"has" to "get it".  But neither is it fair to dismiss the whole thrust
of modern development because one doesn't like particular productions.

Anne Ozorio <[log in to unmask]>