SCANDAL AS A NON-EVENT?

The most sensational theatrical scandal of the year 2006, in Germany and internationally, turned out to be a non-event. On September 26, the General Manager of the Deutsche Oper Berlin announced that, as a precaution against possible Islamic protests, she had cancelled the scheduled performance of Mozart's Idomeneo. Kirsten Harms explained that she had been alerted by the Berlin office of criminal investigations (Landeskriminalamt) regarding a phone call from a concerned opera-subscriber, who wondered if the programmed production of the opera, which had been performed without incident in 2003, would under current political conditions cause disturbances by Muslim extremists. Following a police assessment of the situation, the Manager was notified by Berlin Senator Ehrhart Körting, Berlin's chief security official, that his office feared a “security risk of incalculable dimensions” (“Sicherheitsrisiko von unkalkulierbarem Ausmaß”) if the performance should be mounted. In view of the months of tension in Europe following the publication in September 2005 in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting Muhammad, a bombing attempt by young Islamic terrorists on a German train, and the reaction to Pope Benedict XVI's September speech at the University of Regensburg, which cited a quotation that infuriated many Muslims, Ms. Harms cancelled the performance.

Mozart and Muslims? The opera was commissioned in 1780 for the Residenztheater in Munich by Prince Karl Theodor, Elector of the Palatinate, who specified the subject: the legend of the Homeric hero Idomeneus.