Breaking: Munich censors an opera for Facebook

Breaking: Munich censors an opera for Facebook

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norman lebrecht

February 19, 2019

The Bavarian State Opera has reacted angrily and ingeniously to Facebook’s takedown of its Tannhäuser video, apparently because it showed female nipples.

The video had been online for almost a year before Facebook removed it, shutting down the company’s account for 24 hours.

Facebook finds bare breasts offensive (but takes millions from Russian fixers).

Bavarian State Opera has responded by creating a nipple-free video for Facebook while keeping the original intact on its own site.

 

Read more about it here.

 

 

Comments

  • Johan says:

    When will it be on DVD ?

  • Wilhelmina says:

    Why are the ladies nude any way? Old fashioned, make up something new, than have women to walk around naked to get paid.

  • msc says:

    As the Landgrave says at the end of Act One: “Es tön in froh belebten Klängen das Lied aus jeder Brust hervor!”

  • Grant says:

    Good ol’ America… guardian of our moral values!

  • Thomas Silverbörg says:

    They play as if they are insulted happily, have no qualms about insulting and degrading, as long as THEY deliver it. They remind me of baptists, preaching water and drinking wine.

  • Bruce says:

    Ha. Pretty good.

    They could have taken it a step further by putting red “nipple bars” over the people who were clothed, as well (e.g. the male orchestra musicians 🙂

  • John Rook says:

    I think the irony is misplaced. In the end, Facebook got what it wanted.

  • observer says:

    Germans have an expression, viel Holz vor der Hütte, and they are not always shy about showing it either. Not a puritanical place. But if FB is to be for an interconnected international community, it has to have an extremely prudent common denominator. Algorithms to find nipples aren’t much of a challenge, but an algorithm for appropriately arty nipples is a challenge.

    There are also differences in what people think children should see. I remember a Maplethorpe exibition in the foyer of the Gassteig Cultural Center in Munich including huge black and white photos of starry, spread-cheek anuses and all. And children were running around everywhere. In fact, the children seemed to find the photos perfectly natural.

    I also remember that a number of years ago, a German company tried to create a sort of German Facebook. I forget what it was called. The site was such blatant thievery that they lost in court. They paid FB a sizeable sum to keep going, but the enterprise seems to have failed. I think the resentments toward FB extend beyond its puritanism.

    • Brettermeier says:

      “Germans have an expression, viel Holz vor der Hütte, and they are not always shy about showing it either.”

      Like everywhere else in the free world.

      “There are also differences in what people think children should see.”

      Museum: Bad (Nipples!)
      Movies: Good (gory violence)

      Sounds about right.

      “I forget what it was called. The site was such blatant thievery that they lost in court”

      StudiVZ. It was the same crap on a smaller scale.

  • anon says:

    Female nipples are subversive.

  • Edgar says:

    Facebook blushes at nipples, but is otherwise happy to take any and all date from us and sell them. It needs to be regulated to bits. It is a monumental danger to democracy, and instead of bringing people together, it feeds the worse in humanity resulting in nothing but evil and division.

  • Petros LInardos says:

    Did anyone notice some glorious orchestral playing?

  • Richard Griffiths says:

    There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

  • In fact, this production should never have replaced David Alden’s brilliant staging of the same opera. The again, why not when you have euros to spare and burn.

  • Ms.Melody says:

    Is nudity now an essential component of operatic experience?

    • Tamino says:

      It’s an essential component of the human condition and an optional component of artistic expression.
      Much more so than cruelty and senseless violence, which seems widely accepted on stages and movie screens, particularly in America.
      It makes you wonder about humanity.

    • Brettermeier says:

      “Is nudity now an essential component of operatic experience?”

      Sure, like the boner amplifiers worn in every Tchaikovsky ballet since Tchaikovsky. 😀

      https://youtu.be/4C3n0B3fSR4?t=32

      Let’s hide them all, nipples and boners, under a burka and no one is offended! Oh, wait…

  • Brian says:

    When will they censor the Umlaut in “Tannhäuser”? Many English-language media already do. And rightly so, as some people may find those two dots offensive!

    • Brettermeier says:

      “When will they censor the Umlaut in “Tannhäuser”? Many English-language media already do. And rightly so, as some people may find those two dots offensive!”

      “Total Recall”…

  • Cyril says:

    Judging from their website, it’s better with nipples. Just an amateur opinion, I am not a doctor.

    But the way they could get around the Facebook nude breast ban is to have all the archers be breastfeeding.

    • Max Grimm says:

      Breastfeeding would make things worse…..you’d have cranky old codgers complaining about the fact that they had to suffer babies (read, anyone under the age of 55) at the opera and you’d have groups of incensed mothers, complaining about the fact that infants were harmed by being exposed to anything from bright lights, high temperatures and loud noises to electromagnetic radiation and toxic dust.
      Best just to leave it as it was and tell the Facebook lot to go [voluntarily redacted 🙂 ]

  • ThrownOutOfTheKremlinForSinging says:

    They censored images of breasts? I hope they will change their policy, and that censorship will eventually be nothing but a distant mammary.

  • Alexandra says:

    And who says Germans have no sense of humor…

  • I wonder what would happen if they just attached a small pastie that *appeared* to be a nipple.

    Perhaps clipped from a famous painting.

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