La Cieca can’t even…

“…the grandest opera houses, where the better tickets are exorbitantly priced, are attended by people who want a good evening out, but are actually presented, as often as not, with what are often called ‘radical rethinkings’ of familiar or even not very familiar works, where the director has chosen to ‘deconstruct’ or ‘subvert’ the opera, so that instead of sitting there passively—this is the idea—the audience will be, in best Brechtian mode, forced to think rather than feel, to feel themselves ‘challenged’ rather than moved.” [The Spectator]