In a piece on a new production of Mozart’s “Abduction from the Seraglio,” the New York Times makes a case for this old art form’s role as an agent of change in our tumultuous cultural reality:
For centuries, opera has been a tool of power, a spectacle developed and organized by influential Western nations and the elites within them. It is long past time for the art form to be more open about this heritage, and to make reparations for it. Using opera to understand the connections between cultures and to experiment with what can bridge them is no longer merely an aesthetic possibility; it’s a moral necessity.
