Just No.

Pacific Opera Project, a small opera company located in the Los Angeles area, has sent out a press release about their upcoming production of Cosi fan tutte. The big selling point: it's based on Gone with the Wind.

I am shuddering just to think about this. The production is a revival; the show was first done in 2012.

I'm wondering whether Pacific Opera Project, which has an Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity statement on their web site, somehow missed the fact that Gone with the Wind was a pro-slavery, pro-South, pro-Lost-Cause book (and film).

I just don't see how you can set any production during the U.S. Civil War, which was fought over slavery, without incorporating a sharp critique of slavery and racism. Maybe this production has this, but honestly, it's 2020 and if you're doing Cosi, or any other opera, you might consider the implications of basing your production on such a book. I mean, I was not happy to see that their trailer has a woman dressed in a maid's outfit - in the south at that time, possibly an outfit worn by an enslaved woman - tightening a corset.

I have pretty serious Just Don't Do This thoughts about the production, yes, without having actually seen it, so I sent some questions to the company via their publicist:

• Does the company have any thoughts on the the extent to which [Gone with the Wind] is very much pro-slavery, pro-plucky-Southern-women, pro-Lost-Cause?
• How is the company mitigating the underlying and often blatant racism of the book?
• It appears that there might be a singer in blackface in the photos. That would be the singer tightening a corset and dressed in a maid's / slave's costume. Is that the case?

The publicist said she would run my questions past the artistic director. I told her that my questions were for quotation and attribution for a blog post.

Here is the response that I have received: 

Thank you for being in touch. Our only comment is that Jessica Mamey is Lebanese and most definitely not in blackface.

That's....not forthcoming and doesn't address the larger questions.  As folks on Twitter have noted, it's still not a good look. (I have just read that the only person of color in the current cast....is the maid. Oh fucking facepalm.) Neither is the guy holding a woman in the air and looking up into her hoop skirts, or the Confederate soldier look-alike. In fact...the whole production looks like a big mistake from here.