From the travails of the house of Atreus through to Brechtian agitprop, theatre has long had a close association with politics, ideas and power. Opera too: just think of all those operas written for imperial courts pleading for rulers to exercise clemency; or modern operas like The Death of Klinghoffer or Satyagraha. Both theatre and opera share the fact that they are staged here, in the now, and cannot help but reflect, in their very immediacy, contemporary concerns. Even if the director aims for a ‘canonic’ performance, the audience will inevitably bring today’s perspective to bear on what they see. Do political realities and contemporary orthodoxies constrain or inspire the arts? After all, Mozart transformed the original Figaro – which Napoleon called a ‘revolution in action’ - into light entertainment suitable for the imperial court: but we can hardly discount the immense popularity of the result. And what do we conclude from the fact that the National Theatre’s attempt to design a play about the dangers of climate change, Greenland, was widely viewed as a failed experiment, while the Royal Court’s The Heretic, which critically interrogated some of the orthodoxies around the issue, was deemed a success? Maybe opera and theatre can be political but can never risk not being entertaining?

British theatre in the 1970s and 80s became world famous for its vociferous opposition to government policy; internationally, performances of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible or Jean Anouilh’s Antigone have become touchstones for commenting on free speech and civil liberties; playwrights such as Harold Pinter, Dario Fo and Vaclav Havel have won renown and considerable political influence by giving voice to numerous struggles across the world. But just how able is theatre to tackle contemporary questions today? The play Enron, satirising corporate greed, became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic but with questionable political impact. After all, it’s a struggle to find anyone not opposed to corporate greed. Plays touting fashionable and now main-stream messages against bullying, unprotected sex, drug abuse, racism and other such social evils are two a penny. Is this still radical theatre for the cheap seats or knowing sotto voce to the stalls? As the centre-left appears to leave the real political stage across Europe, and as economic austerity bites, might drama rediscover an oppositional role, challenging the status quo?

Might we, the audiences, actually be to blame? Have we, in the post-ideological West at least, abandoned fighting for a better future politically: instead taking consolation in art that flatters our cynicism and ‘right-on’ political prejudices? Has revolution on the stage become a substitute for political engagement outside of the theatre? Can directors compensate by highlighting the relevance of their production or is it a mistake to resort to telling us what we should take away from our evening out? What does the trend for pre- and post-performance talks at theatres and opera houses tell us? Is the opera house and theatre a live forum for new and emerging politics? Brecht, at the end of his life, thought that dramatic representation of contemporary issues was still possible because we, the audience, still believed in the possibility of transforming the world. Is that still true, and, if not, what might it mean for theatre and opera?