Last week I ran across a video of a protest at a concert of the touring Tehran Symphony Orchestra. I didn’t know the story behind it, and at that point the video didn’t tell me enough to fully understand. But I just ran across and article that explains:
I counted maybe 300 people in an auditorium built for well over a thousand. More than a few of those who came beat a hasty retreat after the music started, including a young Swiss composer and his German date, who, when I asked what they were doing there, said they had landed tickets at the last minute from the tourist office after pleading that they hadn’t anything better to do with themselves that night. They knew nothing about the music or musicians. (Iranian organizers didn’t distribute programs.) Less than a half-hour into the symphony the couple sheepishly snuck out.
Who could blame them? At the end protesters took to the stage, announcing (in Persian) that the bouquets of flowers they carried and then gravely laid on the conductor’s podium were to honor the recently executed dissidents in Iran. The players and singers swiftly hustled into the wings.
