Before the uproar over Shakespeare in the Park’s “Julius Caesar” and Kathy Griffin’s photo with a bloody mask resembling President Trump’s severed head; before theater producers banked on politics for the success of shows like “1984” and “Building the Wall”; before debate raged anew over funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, there was “The Cradle Will Rock.”

This 1937 breakthrough opera by Marc Blitzstein — a savage, politically charged allegory about a rich man who uses his money to boss around the people of Steeltown, U.S.A. — courted controversy by taking bold stances on economic inequality, corruption and the working class when unions were a divisive topic and front-page news. The piece was a product of the New Deal-era Federal Theater Project, but was shut down by the government shortly before opening night. (Its eventual opening is the stuff of theater legend; we’ll get to that.)

And now, 80 years later, Opera Saratoga is staging “The Cradle Will Rock” as part of its summer festival, in a year when political messages onstage are under acute scrutiny, and when the show’s themes are as present in the news as ever. A case about unions’ rights has once again arrived at the Supreme Court. The latest woes of a Pennsylvania steel town were recently on the front page of The New York Times. “Cradle” even has a song about fake news.