The opera house director who yanked a controversial version of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” now says she never really cancelled it. And the Berlin security guy who advised her against running the show now says they should go ahead and perform it. See here and here. And more:

[Berlin's state interior minister Ehrhart] Koerting was interrupted by heckling — and some shouts for his resignation — from the audience at a roughly half-full opera house. He suggested that the decision to cancel was, with hindsight, a mistake.

“It was probably wrong that the piece was not staged,” he said. “In this case, I reacted in that I took a bit too much consideration of security. That may be a mistake — but I say better a bit too much than a bit too little.”

Not always so.

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Meanwhile, members of The Religion of Perpetual Outrage are taking out their centuries-old anger on a poor banyan tree:

Police protection for ‘mystical’ tree after Muslim attack

A POLICE cordon has been placed around a huge banyan tree in the capital of Indonesia after members of a Muslim youth group attacked it to prove it had no mystical powers.

“The city government tried hard not to cut the tree when we built a bus lane. It is more than 100 years old and it is important for the environment,” said Susi Marsitawati, of Jakarta’s park agency. “But rumours spread that the government was unable to fell the tree because it has supernatural powers.”

Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, but a strong mystical vein runs through the culture. Jeje Zainudin, chairman of the United Islam Youth, said the group had carried out the attack to counter superstitions surrounding the tree.

Here’s what’s left of it via Yahoo! News:

That’ll teach it, huh?

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