Animal activists shrink Berlin’s Ring
NewsThe animal rights group PETA has successfullu pressured the Staatsoper unter den Linden to remove cages with rabbits and guinea pigs from its new production of Wagner’s Ring.
The guineas have been removed altogether and the bunnies have been reduced from 30 to 20.
The one who were left out will probably get eaten unless they find another opera.
Any offers?
photo: Staatsoper/Ritterhaus
Perhaps a Freischutz somewhere.
Things will be fine unless they start boiling the remaining bunnies.
I don’t know how this can be considered a credible production without the full contingent of rabbits and guinea pigs that Wagner specified in the score.
I’m with PETA on this one, though I don’t see why a compromise had to be reached, still subjecting 20 caged rabbits to the ordeal. Singers, stagehands, orchestra and audience choose to be there, but not the poor creatures, who won’t understand what’s going on. I can’t imagine them not being frightened by operatic voices and a Wagner orchestra.
When rabbits eat all the young trees you plant on your farm – in their dozens and dozens – you don’t feel nearly so sympathetic towards them.
I’m with Peta too. In Siegfried the “hero” slammed into the cages, scuttling the frightened rabbits. IMO this is animal abuse. I was not alone in the audience, around me there were gasps of surprise or anger.
In what universe do you need rabbits and guinea pigs for the Ring? I’m all for new/strange productions and envelope pushing, but… What?
That just ended the Acting Career of these Post Pandemic Young Animals
Perhaps they could co-opt some as Parsifal Easter bunnies?
A modest suggestion:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/80283/hasenfeffer-sour-rabbit-stew/
For every rabbit and guinea pig that PETA saved, I will kill a koala.
Burp. Too late.
Can we have toads leaping around the stage? So that Wotan cannot work out which one is Alberich?
Does anybody here remember a production of Wozzeck at the Köln opera in about ’86 or so that featured a stage filled with white rabbits?