Ahhh, those nutsy German Opera fans...

Some days I miss living in Germany.

Some days... not so much.

Der Spiegel:

For Americans, the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York is hallowed ground. For a theater in Germany, though, its the perfect setting for a provocative production of Verdi's "A Masked Ball" -- one that includes naked retirees, Mickey Mouse masks and burning Uncle Sam hats.

Giuseppe Verdi, one might think, is hard to mess up. But a theater in the eastern German city of Erfurt seems to be doing its best. In a re-interpretation of the opera "A Masked Ball," which opens on Saturday, director Johann Kresnik has hit upon a dramatic novelty: His staging has naked pensioners wearing Mickey Mouse masks, wandering around the ruins of New York's World Trade Center.

In all, there are to be 30 aged nudists -- between 50 and 69 years old -- sharing the stage with a Ground Zero backdrop. In other scenes, actors wander the stage wearing US flags and burning Uncle Sam hats. Indeed, there is little subtlety in the message Kresnik intends to send.

Indeed, though the production looks unlikely to win many prizes for the nuance of its message, Mr Kresnik has succeeded in his other aim, selling out the Erfurt opera house for the premiere.

...As did Victor Davis Hanson:

The last time German opera producers wished to be "provocative," radical Islamists simply shut down their fun with an ultimatum—stop or else. And the home of 80 million and the world's third largest economy of course caved. But this time they got smarter and are now staging Verdi's A Masked Ball on a set of the World Trade Center ruins, with insulting anti-American characters. Two queries: why do they assume that a few death threats from their beheading jihadist enemies are far more worrisome than losing the good will of millions of their tolerant American allies?; and, two, why do German leftists always put Hitler moustaches on those who saved them from their own home-grown Hitler?

Of course, Germany is always a mix of old and new, as this reviewer of the Erfurt Opera House itself explains:

Germany's newest opera house is located in Erfurt, the capital city of Thüringen. This is the only new opera house to have been built in Germany so far in the 21st century.
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My latest visit to Erfurt was to see the operetta Die Dollarprinzessin (The Dollar Princess) by Leo Fall (1873-1925), starring Frauke Schäfer as Alice.

This operetta was first performed in Vienna in 1907, at a time when rich American heiresses were all trying to find European aristocrats to get married to.

Alice in the operetta runs her father's company with an iron hand, and has no time or patience for men of any sort, aristocrats or not. Of course she finally does fall for one, but not until there have been all sorts of wild complications and a trip to Europe. The music is fun, and the Erfurt production is quite clever, including among other things a swimming pool full of dollars, as in a Scrooge McDuck comic.