Year: 2009

Threat Received over Opera
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Below is a photo of the threat letter and a press release about it. Please help us spread the word about this, and show your support by buying tickets and donating. For more information, please call (713) 533-9632.
Threat

WINNING WORK AT OPERA FESTIVAL SPARKING CONTROVERSY
‘Edalat Square,’ opening May 21, takes look at Islam, homosexuality

HOUSTON — The organizers of the second annual Opera Vista Festival suspected one of their featured operas would draw controversy. But when an anonymous letter threatening the founders of the Nova Arts Project arrived at founding director Amy Hopper’s doorstep, she realized the show had potential to ignite a firestorm.

“We received this letter that was all about ignorance and hate, and that’s the whole point of this opera — to confront ignorance and hate. It makes it even more important to tell the story,” Hopper said.

The opera is “Edalat Square,” one of two works that won Opera Vista’s inaugural festival competition in 2007 (think “American Idol” for opera composers). Written by Atlanta-based composer R. Timothy Brady, the opera recounts the true story of Mahmoud Asgari, 17, and Ayaz Marhoni, 16, who were hanged in Iran in 2005 for the crime of lavaat, or sex between two men. Brady was inspired by the story to craft a poetic work that offers an unblinking look at bigotry, but is also prayerful and mystical, said Viswa Subbaraman, artistic director and co-founder of Opera Vista.

“It’s an amazing appeal to the soul,” Subbaraman said. “It’s some of the most poignant music and lyrics in opera. I don’t know how you could watch it and not be moved.”

Because of its exploration of two hot-button topics — radical Islam and homosexuality — performances of “Edalat Square” have faced opposition before. At its world premiere at Emory University, the university’s president contemplated canceling the show because of complaints. Some critics have said the show is persecuting the Islamic faith, which festival organizers say it doesn’t. Others object to the homosexual content.

On May 5, Amy Hopper found out the show was already pushing buttons here in Houston. She opened her mailbox to discover a hand-stenciled, anonymous letter that said: “You are pigs to mix Islam with gays. You must stop! We will not let you do it.”

The festival’s organizers actually are glad the opera could spark debate or criticism. That’s part of the purpose of the performing arts — to provoke discussion and ignite the emotions, they said.

“Great art should open a discussion, and I think that’s what this opera does,” Subbaraman said. “Art has never existed in a vacuum — it often has a political bent, and that’s as it should be.”

“Edalat Square” will open the Opera Vista Festival at 8 p.m. Thursday, May 21, in the Wortham Theater Complex at the University of Houston. For more information and a schedule of operas being performed at the festival, visit www.operavista.org or www.novaartsproject.com/shows/ovf.

Nova Arts Project is a Houston-based, not-for-profit performing arts organization that seeks to recreate classics and inspire new works in a fearlessly theatrical way.

Opera Vista is dedicated to continuing the growth of the operatic tradition by producing fully-staged versions of new and contemporary operas, giving living composers a performance venue, and establishing and developing an audience for new opera. Opera Vista is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

Today is the 5th anniversary of the Café Hayek blog. One of the authors, Don Boudreaux, marks the date with a repost of his from the early days. The analysis is still apt today.

But Think of the Lost Jobs! (by Don Boudreaux):

50 years ago this month, Dr. Jonas Salk launched nationwide testing of his polio vaccine. Within an incredibly short time (and with help from the researches and refinements of Dr. Albert Sabin), polio was effectively wiped out as a health threat in America.

But there’s a downside: job loss. How many workers, who played by the rules, lost their jobs as a result of this development? People who built wheelchairs and crutches, who helped manufacture iron-lung machines, and who specialized in nursing polio victims – many of these people were thrown out of work by the product supplied by Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin. Some of these workers surely found comparable alternative employment quickly. Others took longer to do so. And probably some others were obliged to accept jobs at much lower pay. Maybe some of these workers never found new jobs.
…..
Of course, this downside is vanishingly insignificant compared to the upside of the polio vaccine. But I mention it to highlight the fact that particular jobs are eliminated by almost any economic or societal change.

Why, then, in our public discussions do we focus so obsessively on international trade as a source of job loss? When domestic consumers shift more of their spending to imports, some specific domestic jobs are lost – just as other jobs are created elsewhere in the domestic economy – but there’s nothing at all unique about trade on this front. Any – ANY – change in the pattern of consumer spending eliminates some jobs and creates others.

Do we condemn the spaying of dogs because it reduces the demand for dog catchers? Ought we to stymie research on electrical cars because, if successful, such cars will cause many workers to lose their jobs in oil fields? Should we denounce the Atkins diet because it will eliminate some jobs in factories making pasta and chocolate? Are the jobs threatened with elimination by spaying, electrical cars, the Atkins diet, and the multitude of other economic changes having nothing to do with international trade, less important to workers who hold them than are jobs held by people working in industries that compete with foreign suppliers?