Christopher Webber: >"The Merchant of Venice" is an excellent case in point. Many theatrical >practitioners feel (I would be one of them) that the play is unperformable >nowadays without offending against either (a) aesthetic or (b) ethical >integrity. It is impossible to avoid nailing your colours to one of these >twin masts. You can't choose both. I think that Mr. Webber pointed the "quid" of this thread: aesthetics vs. ethics. My point is that there is no dilemma: the ethic offense doesn't exist in art. Art is not "ethical", and it doesn't must be. I'm a catholic: should I stop reading Plinius just because he wrote about christians: "that bunch of freaks"?. Danish people should feel offended too, because Shakespeare shows a danish prince as sissy and irresolute?. This false dilemma may leads us to certain paths: the same of those who condemned Baudelaire and Joyce. Oh yes, don't say that this is not the same case: the work of Baudelaire and Joyce was reputed "inmoral" and "offensive" in its times. ("Unperformable"....brrr, what a dangerous word!...). PS: Sorry for my insistence on this thread. I know that some comments goes often far beyond music, but this is a debate of particular interest for me. Pablo Massa [log in to unmask]