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Germany

Hitler Birthday Show Planned For Berlin Opera House. What Were They Thinking?

Op-Ed: The Berlin opera house scheduled a performance of Richard Wagner’s "Rienzi" – Hitler’s favorite opera – for April 20, the Führer’s birthday. After complaints, the show was rescheduled. Still, how could the Deutsche Oper have organ

Hitler's Reichstag speech in 1933 promoting the bill (German Federal Archives)
The capital's classic music lovers gather at the Berlin opera house (@boetter)
Lucas Wiegelmann

BERLIN--You only need to know a few basic facts to understand how the German opera world's latest bit of theatrics demonstrates zero historical awareness and even less of a sense of how to manage the past.

1. Richard Wagner's "Rienzi" was Adolf Hitler's favorite opera.

2. During the Nazi era, the Deutsche Oper Berlin was, along with the Bayreuth Festival Theater, the bastion of music for the Nazis.

3. This year is the Deutsche Oper's 100th anniversary.

4. Hitler's birthday was on April 20, and during the Nazi years it was a big day known as "Führers Geburtstag" (Führer's birthday).

This information is available to anyone as educated as, say, an opera house director.

So if you conducted a poll and asked on what day in 2012 you should NOT, as director of the Deutsche Oper, schedule a performance of "Rienzi," the answer -- after maybe Christmas Eve and the day of the European Soccer Championships finale – would be April 20. Right? Talk about a bad idea: Hitler's opera, on his birthday, during the centennial year of an opera house adored by Joseph Goebbels and Nazi big-wigs in general. Really?

Christoph Seuferle, however, didn't have a problem with it. The commissioning director of the Deutsche Oper set the date long ago and nobody put two and two together.

Until recently, that is, when staffers at the Deutsche Oper did notice and protested. So now the institution has released a statement that reads: "During internal discussions, a number of those associated with the opera house stated that for personal reasons a performance of that opera on that particular night would be difficult or impossible."

"Rienzi" has now been rescheduled for the following night. Leos Janacek's "Jenufa" will be performed on April 20.

Read the original story in German

Photo - @boetter

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Geopolitics

Why The Latin American Far Left Can't Stop Cozying Up To Iran's Regime

Among the Islamic Republic of Iran's very few diplomatic friends are too many from Latin America's left, who are always happy to milk their cash-rich allies for all they are worth.

Image of Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's embassy in Tehran/Facebook
Bahram Farrokhi

-OpEd-

The Latin American Left has an incurable anti-Yankee fever. It is a sickness seen in the baffling support given by the socialist regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which to many exemplifies clerical fascism. And all for a single, crass reason: together they hate the United States.

The Islamic Republic has so many of the traits the Left used to hate and fight in the 20th century: a religious (Islamic) vocation, medieval obscurantism, misogyny... Its kleptocratic economy has turned bog-standard class divisions into chasmic inequalities reminiscent of colonial times.

This support is, of course, cynical and in line with the mandates of realpolitik. The regional master in this regard is communist Cuba, which has peddled its anti-imperialist discourse for 60 years, even as it awaits another chance at détente with its ever wealthy neighbor.

I reflected on this on the back of recent remarks by Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, the 64-year-old Romina Pérez Ramos. She must be the busiest diplomat in Tehran right now, and not a day goes by without her going, appearing or speaking somewhere, with all the publicity she can expect from the regime's media.

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