Culture and Sacrifice

"I am always interested in synergetic ways of thoughts. This book basically interlocks different types of culture into the art of opera. So, essentially, the art of opera becomes a litmus paper for what the rest of society is expressing at that point in time and, of course, that differs in different decades and centuries. This book goes through European history from the Renaissance right through to our time exploring this idea. It looks at how the rituals in life take away our self-awareness and sense of who we are and allows us to become more of a collective. That tells us where we are in society and who we are. If you look at the rituals of death you can see that they have differed a lot throughout history to reflect the society at the time. I think the Classical period from 1750 to 1820 was particularly interesting. It came right before the Romantic period and was when people like Mozart and Beethoven were about. For me this era was very similar to our time and that makes it easy to relate to. Society is like a wave that undulates back and forth between Romanticism and the Classical period and when we get too far into the Romantic era of self-indulgence and focusing on the individual and the ego there is a backlash towards a more precise definition of what humanity is. And that is what I think we are seeing today as well as back then."