The Hungarian State Opera has cancelled 15 performances of the popular musical Billy Elliot because of negative press that claimed the musical could lead to people turning homosexual.
In an official statement the opera stressed that it was not cancelling the performances because it believed the claims, but because the controversy surrounding the production and negative media reports had lead to poor ticket sales.
“The performances have not been cancelled due to the press controversy but by the decreasing interest generated by it.” the company said in a statement.
The Elton John musical was adapted from the successful feature film that tells the story of a young boy from a mining town who just wants to pursue his dreams of becoming a ballet dancer.
Ticket sales for the show plummeted after a conservative opinion writer accused the opera company of spreading “rampant gay propaganda”.
“How can such an important national institution as the opera go against the objectives of the state and use a performance made for young people around 10, at their most fragile age, for such pointed and unrestrained gay propaganda?” writer Zsofia N. Horvath asked in the newspaper Magyar Idok.
The writer argued that viewing the musical was against the national interest and would lead to less babies being born if some children realised they were homosexual.
“Promoting homosexuality cannot be a national objective in a situation where the population is already aging and decreasing, and our nation is threatened by foreign invasion,” Horvath said.
The claims that the musical was ‘promoting homosexuality’ come despite the Hungarian version being rewritten to remove prominent gay characters from the story.
OIP Staff
