#main consideration - if you're trying to reach some truth about humanity you will find horrible things'

[fitzrove]

Ethan Freeman, Hass and the original production of Elisabeth

Recently, @behindthemirrorofmusic shared an interview clip from her radio show with me (thank you so much!). In it, Ethan Freeman (original Lucheni) talks about, among other things, Hass and the criticism the number has gotten over the years.

Dannii: Several Jewish fans of the show have said it's a rather triggering song and makes them feel uncomfortable - making them feel that Lucheni is turning against them. Did you think about that or does this raise any feelings in you? Ethan: Ah, no. Lucheni is a cynic, but he certainly did not ally himself with the fascistic transition that happens in the course of that number, as it begins to look into the future and towards the growing demonization of Jews in the Elisabethan world moving towards the period of the Nazis. Again, as Che is with the Peronistic fascism [in Evita], Lucheni looks at it with bitter cynicism. I can see people being uncomfortable, but the scene and the number were designed to make everybody uncomfortable [laughs]. And the Austrian audience, who at the time had to - and perhaps to a bigger extent even now still has to - deal with its fascist and antisemitic past... That number was always met with a kind of deathly, breathless silence. Sometimes applause at the end, but first it was always this reaction of "[gasp] This was us!". And that's what the number was there for. Obviously, Harry Kupfer, the director, was a tremendous antifascist, and so he directed the number to hit very hard. I remember we performed the show [one night] and Jörg Haider, the leader of the ultra-right party in Austria at the time was in the audience of the show - and he walked out after the number! I knew I had done my job when I heard he had walked out. Because the number points a finger at exactly the kind of ideology he seemed to purvey. So... As a Jewish person myself, I want to show the world its ugly reflection. If it made me uncomfortable in any sense, watching the Jewish character getting beaten up in that scene, it's because it's supposed to make people feel - "oh, this is not good". I think good theatre is for people with strong stomachs, and if people are extremely sensitive to that sort of thing, then they have to figure out how to deal with it. I don't think for any reason that that [scene] should not be in the show. Because it was a reflection of the history of that time - but not only that time, obviously.

(Interview by Dannii Cohen, September 10, 2023. Emphasis mine. Transcribed from the first episode of the new series of Behind the Mirror of Music. Source)