It hadn’t occurred to me that the Assyrians stood for the Ottomans, though I’ve seen my share of anti-Turk fortresses. But it makes sense.

I am glad you liked it. You are correct that they used space extremely efficiently. Very clever production on a shoestring. One disappointment was the actual decapitation. Call me ghoulish, but I love my operatic decapitations, and felt a bit short-changed with this one. Nothing like Opera Australia’s production of Salome, for example!

But I do disagree with you on “the inescapable parallels between ancient and present Middle Eastern politics.” I found the dressing of Holofornes’ soldiers all in black, complete with tea-cosie’s on their heads very distracting. On the hand hand, they looked like bouncers outside Oxford Street bars. OTOH, they looked like PLO gunman assassinating Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. If this was the aim to try and draw some historical parallels, it was way out of step with the actual story, which is basically about the heroine as conniving, ruthless, and sexy little minx!

To suggest a parallel between the truly abominable imperial policies of the Assyrians and the brave dissent by subject peoples to the west - in this case Judah - to the modern middle east, is historically-inaccurate. Recall that Vivaldi wrote this following the first successful European repulsion of the ever-westward expansionism of the Ottoman Muslims by Venice at the beginning of the 18th century. This is extremely important to maintain as far too many westerners today have been brainwashed into thinking that in historical tensions between Europe and the Msulim world, it is the Europeans who have been the “baddy” imperialists, when the opposite is the case.