Christe Gruenheid said she had seen the production nine times and did not care about the controversy that erupted when the opera's November performances were canceled because of vague security warnings.
The production was rescheduled after protesters said the opera management had failed to defend artistic freedom.
"I'm only here because of the music," Gruenheid, 69, said. "The whole commotion leaves me cold."
The scene that started the trouble, with the severed heads of Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha, and the Greek god of the seas, Poseidon, was left in. It's the creation not of Mozart but of director Hans Neuenfels, who called it his personal protest against all organized religion.
The production is three years old, and when it premiered in 2003 the severed heads aroused little attention outside the opera world.
But that was before a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Mohammed that led to Muslim riots worldwide -- and before comments by Pope Benedict XVI further inflamed sensibilities in the Islamic world, just as the Neuenfels production was to be revived.
Such fears initially led the opera house to cancel the revival. Opera manager Kirsten Harms said in September that her decision was prompted by the advice of Berlin police and she invoked the "consequences of the conflict over the [Mohammed] caricatures."
The decision was roundly condemned, with Chancellor Angela Merkel warning against "self-censorship out of fear," and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, the country's top security official, describing it as "crazy."
