The Abduction from the Seraglio
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There you are listening to Mozart's harmonies under your headphones not suspecting that his dusty passions would ignite a furor in Germany.
The modern interpretation of the classic work, funded by German taxpayers, has failed to impress Germany’s cultural elite, but the producers have remained defiant and say Mozart was obsessed with sex and would have been proud of the new adaptation, paid for with German arts council funding.
Widely considered one of the composer’s most beautiful operas, The Abduction from the Seraglio tells the story of a noblewoman, Konstanze, who is kidnapped and taken to the Orient. But the opera’s harmonious melodies have now been put to scenes of sadomasochism, orgies, rapes, physical brutality and showers of urine in the modern production by the Comic Opera in Berlin.
Sexed-up opera shocks German Mozart purists