Seeking Ferret

So my first kneejerk response is that my preference is that they not stage it. Sometimes works of art are just fundamentally anti-semitic and there's no clear way to avoid that. The problem, of course, is that Dan Rheingold is a work of genius. The music is amazing, and in many parts it's revolutionary, changing the way people thought about opera. Several of my favorite 20th century operas take clear inspiration from Wagner's techniques, so much so that if I didn't know Wagner I wouldn't understand what was happening in the music. So we're back to batdina's formulation above, It's more useful to let the show go on and then critique it, than it is to cancel the show and not challenge ourselves in a difficult place.. The point isn't that I have a correct way for the Met to handle Alberich, it's that sometimes the Met stages anti-semitic works as part of its mission to bring the most important works of opera to the New York audience, just as it sometimes stages misogynistic and racist and classist works. And while I understand why they do it, don't ever ask me to defend their choice. In my heart, I think the Met should put up big banners around these works saying "WE'RE STAGING THIS BECAUSE AS A WORLD CLASS OPERA HOUSE WE HAVE TO. THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE THINK YOU SHOULD ACTUALLY WATCH IT. IF YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH IT DESPITE THIS WARNING, COME IN WITH YOUR EYES WIDE OPEN TO ITS SEXISM OR RACISM OR ANTI-SEMITISM."