Orthodox rabbi Jeremy Rosen went to see the Verdi spectacular and dissents from the Met’s production in his weekly sermon:
The music, the sets, the choreography was superb. Only one thing got in the way of a heavenly experience. It was a stupid and irrelevant innovation; another example of current woke ideology degrading instead of elevating underlining the attempted suicide of the Western cultural world….
In this production we are presented with an innovation not previously seen. A background theme of actors and actresses dressed in the gear of archaeological adventurers making silent records of what they have or want to confiscate and transport home for financial and political gain. And we see them in the course of the evening in the background carrying off artifacts of Egyptian culture or front stage sitting on stool recording details in a notebook for future reference perhaps. Totally out of place visually let alone intellectually. So that the message becomes patently clear. We righteously claim that we are trying to excuse ourselves for the sins of the past by inserting an important nod to the fact that a lot of monkey business was going on under the colonial regimes. As it aways has under almost every culture of the world since the earliest of times. Much of the looting and adorns many of the museums of the west. But then which government of what state, can honestly claim to be the unsullied guardian and heir of their past?
Of course, I do not approve of looting or taking advantage of the weak, especially if the victims and perpetrators are one’s own people. But what has this genuflecting got to do with a wonderful piece of entertainment? And why just now? There was a time when one could draw a distinction between entertainment and politics but now it’s infecting everything.
Discuss.
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