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Asked whether a shelved report on the atrocities chaired by a judge, Simplicius Chihambakwe, would ever be published, as requested by the opposition, he says, “I don’t know what happened to that report.”

“Simplicius” predates that “exile” but it is still a work of protest — against war, brutality and abuse of power.

It certainly wasn’t for Karl Amadeus Hartmann, whose opera “Simplicius Simplicissimus” was begun just after Hitler came to power, had no chance of performance in the Third Reich and, despite occasional postwar productions, languished at the margins of the repertoire.

If that were all, “Simplicius” might not seem especially subversive.

One interesting detail that he took from the original libretto but expanded was the way the innocent, rustic Simplicius equates the terror of the soldiers with a wolf that kills his sheep.