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.