Decapitating Mozart

Today is the International Music Day and I decided to write about my favourite composer, whose 250th anniversary is celebrated this year: Mozart, my dear Wolfie, who else?
Why now, you may ask, as he was born in the end of January and everybody wrote about him then? Now it has to be, because this past week one of his operas was cancelled by the German Opera in Berlin, due to threats by Islamites. Unfortunately, the capitulation of the West is becoming a habit, and very soon no one will dare to repeat any words of the Koran without the risk of being assassinated.
But there is a side of this story that has not been mentioned until now: the side of the author. Why does Mozart have to put up with the total disrespect for his work coming from those that society should regard as cultural agents or keepers of culture? It happened with Idomeneo on stage. Why has the soundbyte substituted analysis and knowledge, thus creating a mass of ignorant cheaters giving information and ignorant cheated receiving it? It happened with Idomeneo on the media. The result is a mess, staining the year of Mozart forever.
I invite you to take a look at the real facts:

The work
Idomeneo, king of Crete is a serious opera in Italian, not one of Mozart's best. He had problems with the libretto and with the singers from the start. It is Mozart, nevertheless, and that means quality.
The story is a humanistic/illuministic view of the returning home of one of the Greek kings victorious in Troy. They all had terrible troubles due to Aphrodite’s and Poseidon’s revenges. The opera begins with Idomeneo's son in love with a Trojan princess, complainig about the way Aphrodite's power makes him suffer. The goddess was on the defeated Trojan side and the god helped the Greeks to capture Troy, yet they never thanked him. So he punished them when they came to his dominion, the sea. However, Idomeneus is not Odysseus; he doesn’t fight Poseidon. To survive a great tempest, he makes a promise to sacrifice to the god the first human being he sees when he touches dry land. The problem is that his son is the one on the beach, thus he cannot fulfil his promise.
After that, all he does is trying to get away with it: by sending his son away, by getting someone else to sacrifice in his stead and by cursing Poseidon’s cruelty. All in all, he ends up in desperation, because he cannot fool the god, who sends a monster to destroy the city (in the original story it is a plague). His son kills the serpent, yet the god is not appeased by that, and Idomeneo is forced to confess his dark vow in public. His people are disgusted with the truth, but his son is willing to be sacrificed. Before that happens, the captive princess of Troy he loves, and who loves him too, offers her own life, saying that it all happened because of her country. At that moment the voice of Poseidon is heard: Love has won (Ha vinto Amore). Poseidon yielded to Aphrodite. No one has to die. But Idomeneo must pass the throne to his son, who is to marry the princess (according to the ancient legend, Idomeneus went to Italy and died there). They all thank the god’s justice and mercy. The final is a hymn glorifying the power of love.

The polemic
In the current production, Idomeneo sings his desperation in the midst of the decapitated heads of Poseidon, Buddha, Jesus and Mohamed. Religious people are offended (not only Muslims) and they want the heads out of the stage. As a consequence, artistic people are offended by the unacceptable limitations to artistic creativity by religious belief.
I believe that religious people should simply protest and forget about it (those represented don’t care about it certainly), but as far as artistic freedom is concerned, in this case, I do believe the producer stepped over the line. Mozart’s greatest concern (like any good native of Aquarius) was mankind: its mistakes, its triumphs, its pains and its power, the human power that can challenge the gods and make mankind divine: the power of love. Idomeneo is a work about the errors of one man, who revealed himself to be both a tyrant with no respect for human life and a pathetic coward. Poseidon is not the one to demand the son’s head (like the god of the Bible with Abraham); he simply shows that Idomeneo’s pusillanimity makes him unfit to rule. Without the love of the young couple, his people would have been destroyed. Therefore, an updated scenario could show a few decapitated heads of today’s rulers, not of gods or prophets. The polemic option is not only anachronistic, as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam appeared many centuries after the fall of Troy (what could be accepted in some context or other, like the previous example with politicians). Indeed it goes against the letter and the spirit of the opera, and that, for me, is not artistic freedom but disrespect for the author and undignified manipulation of the work. The producer has got all the right in the world to write an opera against religion. However, he has no right to abusively making Idomeneo into one.
It is ironic this polemic happened exactly with an opera that exalts divinity, in gods as well as in humans; mankind rejecting both is a sign of the times. When the individual (the author) is forgotten for the sake of the circus, the West is going to the dogs. When the director of the German Opera doesn’t care about how Mozart is mistreated by the production, but cancels the performance due to threats by religious fanatics, the West is going to the dogs. And when no one cares (not even the experts) for the analysis in depth of the situation on the media, by starting to listen to the opera and to study its background, but instead they choose scandalous headlines and punch lines to keep the fire of suspicion burning, the West is going to the dogs.
Meanwhile, the only head decapitated is Mozart's.