land of hope and regie
That favorite strawman of closed-minded critics, “Regie opera,” is the target of yet another limp-noodle critical flailing, this time from a chap by the name of Geoffrey Wheatcroft – as if someone whose mugshot is so obviously a emblem of bowtied entitlement has any right to pronounce judgment on anyone else’s visual taste. Just how tired is the Wheatcroft whinge? Well, he’s still complaining about the Peter Sellars production of Nozze di Figaro, a staging that hasn’t been revived since the late 1980s. [The Guardian]
It’s symptomatic that the best line in the entire piece is someone else’s: “which illustrates Clive James’s saying that directing opera is what Germans do nowadays instead of invading Poland.”
Oh, fer fuck’s sake. “Why should mere boring old music by Haydn and Beethoven be allowed to speak for itself?” It’s such a ridiculous argument, as its obvious logical conclusion is staying home reading scores. Performed arts are interpretive, bub. I had to laugh at the line about staging the Waldstein Sonata despite its own inconsistency with anything anyone really believes (please nobody tell him about Les Sylphides, terrible what liberties these modern directors…oh? Nevermind!) Also I know these things are a matter of taste, but if one does accept that opera need not be a joyless exhumation, isn’t Sellars’ staging of “Non so piu” kind of sweet and funny? I mean at least moreso than, uh, threatening?
And even more pathetic, the production he uses in reference to Will’s quote (#1) is by a Spaniard, not a German. He can’t even get that right. What a useless piece of writing – I almost regret that this idiot is getting more attention through parterre.com.
Mark Adamo wrote a rather interesting essay on this issue some years ago:
http://www.markadamo.com/writings/directors
and, actually, Susan Larson was quite wonderful as the horny-jock Cherubino. . .
So, wait. Between Verdi’s setting Boïto’s remix of Shakespeare’s plays making a (delicious) hash of history, to WHAT, exactly, are directors supposed to be accurate and faithful?
Should we meticulously preserve and reconstruct Shakespeare’s anachronisms, while being careful to add none of our own?
Should we adhere strictly to a 19th-century vision of a Renaissance vision of the Middle Ages?
Or are we actually permitted to interpret Verdi’s interpretation of Boïto’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s interpretation of the past?
There’s an argument to be made against “regie opera,” or at least some of its facets, but it needs to be done with much more rigor and intelligence than this. A modicum of thought would also have reminded the writer that art written to be performed can’t be left to “speak for itself” — there’s no way to avoid interpretation, nor do I want to.)
And in my view, those Sellars-Mozart stagings hardly even belong to the regie genre as currently practiced.
For the past 10 years, Peter Sellars has been “staging” music with the LA Philharmonic and has committed the far greater sin of being boring.
It’s sad that the UK press fills space with the burblings of idiots (usually either youngish women with right-wing leanings or old codgers who think they’re lefties). But there’s no reason to pay attention to them. It isn’t as if the idiots are in your personal space and you need to be polite to them.
Helen Elsom, sorry you DO have to be polite to them here. Yes?
But we agree, you do not have to pay
attention to them.
Nobody’s taken Wheatcroft seriously for years. I was astonished to open the Guardian and find they’d given him a platform.
What a tired old crone. The fool thinks he’s so clever with his “sarcastic” observation about staging Winterreise. And then he can’t even get Schubert’s title right.
You must see this
http://yankeediva.blogspot.com/2009/07/and-show-went-on.html
I was there – it was an unforgettable evening. The audience was delirious and even the critics were clapping like mad. “Cessa di piu resistere” drew unprecedented applause but no encore – there was a funny bit of business with Corbelli consulting his fob watch to marvel at the length of the ovation.
Well Joyce has won hands down the “brave performer” medal for all time. Imagine singing through the entire rest of the opera with a painful broken leg. She is one incredible young artist. We all want you to get well fast, Joyce. Take the time necessary to do so.
Re Wheatcroft, I fear I tend to agree in general. I do think the restaging of operas (beyond recognition of where they set and what they are about) has gotten out of hand. If you can radically “modernize” the staging, why not the music? Why not rewrite Mozart’s music to make it sorta…well,..atonal, you know, like Stravinsky, etc? Then everything would be wonderfully “up to date”.
Did anyone listen to Jonas Kauffmann’s Lohengrin debut this afternoon/ I thought he sounded luminous and excellent – I heard a few boos for the new production tho (they didn’t play Jonas’ curtain call)
Lohengrin isn’t over–it’s only the second intermisson currently. Yes, JK is excellent as is most of the cast although I don’t “get” Harteros. It’s extremely slow though and I agree that the boos would likely be for the production (the photos I’ve seen don’t look promising) and/or the conducting.
I jumped the gun since I am listening in the USA and didn’t get the time right. It is still playing here.
Frankly most times I don’t have the problem. I tend to prior-inquire if some production is trying to be ‘oh so very clever’ or far out. If so, I resist seeing it. I prefer to listen to opera and create in my mind ‘the setting that suits me.
“Let’s make instant regie……(Mod cool)- geometric shapes, slick chrome, glass,and steel tubing or ( Leftie inclinations) trash and symbols of doom and decay all over the stage. Both concepts must though be 180 degrees off compass of meaning and tradition, and when then stretch the new concept into the realm of the complete nonsensical. After all the composers just provided the incidental music to these ego displays.
What’s the opera really about? Why you haven’t been to a pre -performance lecture from some twit of a director have you? You must accept his opinion and your place in the scheme of things. This is ‘high culture’. There are a lot of fawning bastards around , willing to accept their mental swill.
A funny paradox : people are so concerned about authentic instrumentation and practice with Baroque opera ( which I find bores me shit-less anyway!) yet they are completely silent about the silly mod stage settings they are getting in the process, from directors.
Harry makes a great point. I have often wondered about this double standard in contemporary opera production. While taste in stage direction, especially in Europe, has gone further and further in the direction of radical reinterpretation, musical standards have become ever more traditional. 50 years ago, hardly anybody would have thought of changing the historical setting of an opera, but musical cuts and transpositions were accepted much more readily than today. But now we can hear uncut versions of baroque and bel canto operas, on period instruments, in new critical editions reflecting the composer’s original intentions, etc., but the look of the production will be post-post-modern. It’s an odd paradox.
I’m curious, Harry–could you give me some examples of this paradox you claim to have identified? It doesn’t jive with my experience and knowledge at all. Sure, there are many performances of baroque opera(certainly NOT in the US) where the musical intentions are to hew as much as possible to composer’s intentions: instruments of the period, no cuts, roles sung by voices in the proper octave, etc.
But I have been to some of those performances where the production was decidedly post-modern and the audience was anything but passive. In David McVicar’s Paris production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea, the characters of Valletto and Damighella carried out their flirtation to choreography derived from hiphop. I found it amusing and apt; the majority of the audience booed and whistled at the end of the scene. Also, in Paris, the marvelous production of Rameau’s Les Paladins (available on DVD) which again featured lots of hiphop influenced choreography and video sight-gags was aggressively booed by a small portion of the audience at each of the two performances I attended. David Alden’s spin on Cavalli’s La Calisto which I saw in Munich and which was recently seen at Covent Garden was mostly acclaimed by the audience I saw it with; I loathed it finding it endlessly vulgar and completely at odds with the work.
On the other hand you continue to have many attempts to recreate a 17th or 18th century production both musically and dramatically, check out either Landi’s Il Sant’Alessio or Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione (both on DVD) or the recent production of Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie in Toulouse.
But perhaps I’m missing out on those examples you are thinking of?
I remember the Peter Sellars staging of Nozze, and I thought it was quite cute and effective. And I am often more conservative than many on this website about such things. I do agree with Orlando Furioso #7 above that the Sellars stagings of Mozart’s operas really don’t fall into the category of contemporary regie production. In fact, they seem really conservative compared to modern regie productions.
I can agree with the old man on one point though. He complains about a staged prelude or overture, right? I HATE staged overtures. I’ve seen many, but I’ve never seen one that helped in the slightest.
Actually that particular staged overture is really good, in my opinion (it’s the one on the DVD with Erwin Schrott, Miah Persson etc. – the McVicar Figaro). Normally I just get angry at articles like this but lately I’ve been wondering if there is some psychological or even physiological reason why these people can’t enjoy music when there’s any tension between the score and the staging at all – a kind of low-grade synaesthesia, perhaps? I’ve heard them say such wildly illogical things in their anti-regie rants (”you just can’t hear the music if…” “Wagner can’t have been thinking of…” etc.) but it obviously makes perfect sense to them.