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]
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.