I look forward to reading your blog in it’s new location.

Zoe

However inks to images of my huge paintings can now be found at “Art for Peace, Planet, Mother & Child”: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/home (see link ).

Talking about madonna. Tosca takes place in the 19th century. Do you really expect an Italian, catholic, chief of police to behave this way? At that time and place? Oh, I forgot, most people today don’t know history and have no clue about historical context.

How about the look of this church. Puccini clearly stated that action should take place in St Andrea della Valle which is a baroque church, quite beautiful. In this staging it is a dreary gray building with the painting of madonna showing a naked breast. Yet the custodian is upset on how madonna resembles some society lady - a revolutionary concept - but ignores the breast? Do these words make sense? Except for directors don’t bother reading the libretto…

Scarpia entertaining himself with prostitutes. Little problem - there is nothing in music that suggests it. this is the guy before whom “the Rome trembled”.

Then there is the whole issue of premeditation. Tosca is catholic and very religious. Her religiosity is in her words and in music. When she kills Scarpia, it is an act of desperation, an act that is in conflict with her beliefs. In this staging, she takes the knife in advance rather than in the last moment making the whole murder premeditated.

After she kills Scarpia there are some musical moments to fill up until she runs. In the traditional staging - that dates from the time of dramatic actress Sarah Bernard playing this role in a play - Tosca is in a trance: she puts candles near the body and puts crucifix on top of it: this shows her religiosity and her conflict. She says “and in front of him the whole Rome trembled”, gets out of her trance and runs away.
The producers did away with candles and crucifix - that would’ve been fine had whatever he replaced these actions with made sense. The trouble is - they didn’t. She runs to the window - does she want to finish opera an act soooner? - then she lies down on a couch and fans herself with a large fan. Is this logical? If you just kill somebody, would you just lie down in the room and rest? Her words about Rome come out of nowhere and no longer make sense.

Then the last act. In spoken theater when nobody speaks, something has to happen. Fair enough. But in opera, something is happening - the music plays. The music shows the early morning, the song of a shepherd shows life going by. This music builds up to Cavaradossi aria about life, about his love. But in this staging the soldiers are practicing mock execution during this time. It is distracting, it doesn’t correspond to music, it just doesn’t make sense. The director seems to have forgotten about “music first”. Newsflash - it is the music that is written by a genius here, it is the music that stood the test of time. Not the play.

I understand how you want to tie every event to a conflict between art and religion. But this wasn’t the case. This was part of a rebellion of American opera fans against the phenomenon known as “regietheater” or as referred in the US as Eurotrash. A few months ago, by the way, a production of Sonnambula at the Met was booed too, and there was no religious connotations there.

Haven’t asked him yet, but that’s a good point. I should do so.

The first covenant was a gift of (among other things) a land — a promised land. The second covenant is a covenant in blood — the blood of Christ. One experiences God the Father in his creation — that is, nature; but one can only experience Christ in a human body — the Body of Christ continues to be present in time through the mystical body of Christ — his people who are united and transformed in the sacraments. I hope this makes sense. I am grateful to you for asking this question! Many Christians don’t even understand it.

As for the Crucifix being a particularly special subject for art — I don’t know (it’s not something he’s borrowing from the Catholic tradition) — maybe it’s a personal opinion. In the early Church, Christ was not depicted in art at all — either the Chi Rho was used, or a fish… or art would depict Noah, or a shepherd, or Adam — all of them prefiguring or referring to Christ. The Crucifix itself (even if it’s mass produced green plastic that glows in the dark) is the sign of salvation for Christians — not only did God become man, but he was willing to die for us? It’s mind boggling. It’s a subject that a Christian will never get to the bottom of. But as far as the making of art goes… But Christian art can have anything as its subject. It’s the crucifix (and the Incarnation, and the Resurrection) that can inform how we look at (or listen to) everything.

While that may be the logic they use, the underlying logic (as I am certain you are aware of) is as follows:
Garlasco works for an organization that hurts the interests of Israel -> Garlasco is participating an activity that can be interpreted by some as anti-Semitic -> by attacking Garlasco we can hurt HRW

Fair or not, he should have been aware of the bad PR repercussions of his actions. It’s politics and he’s been in the field long enough to know how to play that game.

Though, when one spends most of one’s time in houses of worship in U.S. synagogues, of course, one thinks all churches are gorgeous…