I seem to be in the middle of a run of operas full of dodgy theology.  First it was the Met’s Parsifal where Wagner à la Girard dished up a puzzling mixture of misogyny, sacred wounds, centuries long curses, bastardization of the Eucharist and weird holy weapons.  There’s a really good conversation about this over at Likely Impossibilities.  Today I was at Opera in Concert’s semi-staged production of Massenet’s Thaïs.  (My review of this should be in the summer edition of Opera Canada).  So today was more misogyny, hairshirts, lots of penance and the idea that the road to sainthood is to be a tart until one’s looks start to go and then torture oneself to death in an appropriately aesthetic manner.  Also, showing empathy for anyone not exactly like oneself leads to doubts, expulsion and damnation.  Coming up soon, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, in which salvation is achieved by rejecting anything to do with the Enlightenment and being guillotined.  There’s a Salome in there too somewhere though I’m not sure there’s anything that could be called coherent theology at all in that.

Blessed are the cheesemakers… Really.