After the pope, now Mozart?

Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian prime minister and prominent statesman of Germany in the Nineteenth century said

"An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts".

However, this is the twenty first century and the world is ridden by the new fear, offending the Muslims and its consequences. A Berlin opera house proved Bismarck wrong by imposing self-censorship on the performance of the Mozart opera Idomeneo fearing an attack by Islamists. Receiving a security alert from police, the Deutsche Oper, one of the Berlin's three Opera houses cancelled the Idomeneo shows starting from November 4, 2006.

The opera is set in ancient Greece after the Trojan War and tells about the human resistance to making sacrifices to the gods. The production by Hans Neuenfels premiered in 2003 and drew widespread criticism over a scene in which King Idomeneo presents the severed heads not only of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon, but also of Muhammad, Jesus and Buddha. The disputed scene is not part of Mozart's original staging of the 225-year-old opera, but was an addition of Neuenfels' production, which was last performed by the company in March 2004.