Nazi-themed version of Wagner opera slammed in Germany

A Nazi-themed production of Tannhauser, a Richard Wagner opera, has been met with a poor reception from audiences in Germany during performances. The production stages atrocities during Nazi rule and even has actors performing the banned Hitler salute.

The Deutsche Oper am Rhein company is staging the production at the Dusseldorf opera house. Monika Doll, a spokeswoman for the opera house, told The Associated Press that the audience “booed and were shocked” by the first performance on Saturday. They are looking to make some changes to the controversial material added by producer Burkhard Kosminski.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the production included a scene where a mother, father and daughter are stripped and shot with no music in the background. Another scene included gassings at the concentration camps and actors were wearing the swastika armbands.

Oded Horowitz, a representative of the Jewish community in the North Rhine told a local paper, “Survivors are likely to find the provocative handling of Nazi history in this Tannhauser production quite painful,” JTA reports. He added, “A theater scandal is not our preferred form of confronting the past.”

Wagner was an anti-Semite and admired by Hitler. His Tannhauser opera was set it Middle Ages and premiered in Dusseldorf in 1845.

Germany is still sensitive when it comes to depiction of Nazis and the symbols associated with them. Just last summer, Russian opera singer Evgeny Nikitin had to withdraw from a German opera festival because of a tattoo that looks like a swastika.

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