To understand the euro crisis, you obviously need to know about economics.But you also need to know about the deep cultural orientations of Europeansocieties.

With the summer holiday season in full swing,it is instructive to look at Europe’s leisureactivities. When Europeans play and relax, they produce a counterpart of their financial and economicstruggles. It is not just a question of what they do. How they do it – and,above all, who does it – helps to reveal the deep nature of Europe’sdifficulties.

In June, the Euro 2012 football (soccer) championship readily lent itself as an analogy to the turmoil surrounding Europe’ssingle currency. Defeated teams were described as having “left the Euro.”Greeks were proud that their country survived the elimination round to reachthe quarterfinals.

The semifinal between Italyand Germanypresaged the apparent willingness ofChancellor Angela Merkel to give in to Italian demands for support of thegovernment bond market. Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti was rapidly dubbed “super Mario,” and a photomontage in the press depicted him with the idiosyncratic Mohawkhairstyle of Mario Balotelli, the player who scored the two Italian goals.

The euro analogies are not just to be found on the playing field. In itsannual festival this year, Munich’s Bavarian State Opera put on a newproduction of the apocalyptic Götterdämmerung,the final work in Richard Wagner’s four-evening cycle Der Ring desNibelungen. The doomed characters held onto a rocking horse in the form ofa large golden euro symbol. The backdrop was a modern glass façade that alternated between a bank headquarters (with theword “Profit” in flashing lights) and a templeof consumer fashion. The crash at the end of the opera was a financial collapsein which corrupt bankers were eliminated.

In Andreas Kriegenburg’s Munichproduction, the euro is presented as the counterpart of Wagner’s own use of theRing as a symbol for power, reflecting a widespread European quest for some conspiracy theory about what is going wrong. TheRing and the euro become the center of a bid by Rhineland businessmen forsupreme mastery in Europe.

It is all a sort of musical parody ofthe view of the euro crisis expounded byMartin Wolf, George Soros, and others: Europe and the world are doomed by Germany’srelentless quest for export surpluses. The way the tale is presented by Germany’smodern critics in the financial press, that bid for power is ultimately futile. On the stage, it all ends in a German way– in terror and destruction.

This kind of interpretation is not new. Even in the nineteenth century,the socialist writer and critic George Bernard Shaw produced a cogent interpretation that Wagner’s Ringwas really a fable about the rise and fallof capitalism. Wagner himself wrote letters to the mad Bavarian King Ludwig aboutthe corruption of finance (though bankers’ remunerationat the time was not comparable with the handouts that Wagner received from the King). Hemay have had the idea for the final cataclysmicconflagration while fighting in the1848-1849 revolution in Dresdenalongside the Russian anarchist leaderMikhail Bakunin.

Opera is not just about directorial intentions. Like soccer, it is worthasking how the show is put on. On the playing field, commentators have longpointed out how much the modern national teams depend on immigrant talent:North Africans for France,Poles and Turks for Germany,and so on. Balotelli comes from a Ghanaianfamily; and the German goal in that match was scored by a third-generationTurkish immigrant, Mesut Özil.

Similarly, opera holds up a mirror to Europe’scontemporary problems. As Europe indulges insummer music festivals, take a look at the musicians. Fewer and fewer of themare Europeans.

The two Siegfrieds – both magnificentsingers – in the MunichRing production were North Americans. Singing has become just anotherversion of the globalization process, and Europeans seem to be losing groundhere, too.

One generation ago, when the soccer World Cup was held in Italy, matches were inauguratedby Italy’ssuper-tenor, Luciano Pavarotti. Togetherwith two Spaniards, José Carreras andPlácido Domingo, “The Three Tenors” made it clear that singing was the oldcontinent’s forte.

But today’s leading tenors – Rolando Villazon, José Cura, and Juan DiegoFlorez – are Latin American. Many of the female operaticsuperstars – Anna Netrebko, Elena Garanca, Angela Ghiorghiu, Magdalena Kožená, Aleksandra Kurzak – come from former communist countries. Others are Asian. The newgeneration of singers is just the tip of a vast influxof global vocalization. (The most charismatic singer in the Munich Ring was the woodbird from Siegfried,the Russian-born Anna Virovlansky.)

The explanation does not lie in professional training at conservatories or in opportunities for experienceon the stage. On both counts, Europe stillrates highly. Small publicly funded theaters are an excellent way for young singersto begin a career, and young Americans and Russians flock to Germany and Italy.

Instead, the explanation of Europe’s vocal decline is more obvious, but also morealarming. It lies in the mixture of the globalization of talent and risinglevels of education outside Europe. YoungEuropeans have become demoralized by therigor and intensity of the global competition that they face. Drive andenterprise evaporate.

Outside Western Europe, generations ofyoung singers have emerged who are willing to make the sacrifices needed todevelop successfully. Europe’s youngmusicians, by contrast, are simply too comfortable and too complacent to work as hard as they must atdeveloping their potential. That failure may be as relevant to the fate of theeuro as it is to the future of European opera.