Eurotrash is the designation for a controversial style of opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 production. Characteristics of this production style are:

• The story is relocated from the original location to a more modern, especially a Fascist-era period
• Modifications to the story from the original script
• Interpretative elements stressing the role of race/gender
  Gender
  Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
  
  /class
  Social class
  Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
  
  -based oppression
  Oppression
  Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...
  
   are stressed while other conventional plot elements are minimized
• Abstraction in the set design
• An emphasis on sexuality
  Human sexuality
  Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
  
   especially perversion
• Costumes frequently mix eras and locales, as in Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
  Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
  Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is a summer opera festival held in St. Louis, Missouri. Typically four operas, all sung in English, are presented each season, which runs from late May to late June. Performances are accompanied by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, which is divided into two...
  
  's 2010 production of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" and 2011 "Don Giovanni," with some characters in 18th century attire and others in mid-20th century garb.

Controversy

The Eurotrash style has been the subject of controversy, especially in the US

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

where the opera-going public has more conservative tastes.

Defenders of the style suggest the updating productions and introducing modern social mores makes the operas more relevant to the modern audience. Another widely-held view is that when a work is always produced in a similar style, that the work becomes routine and loses the artistic impact it had when it was new.

Critics of Eurotrash argue that modern audiences can better understand and appreciate works presented with the original story and setting and moreover that the Eurotrash modifications represent an ill-fitting injection of the views of the director and production designer into a work that does not truly express those views.