where will the elite meet?
Now that single tickets are available for purchase by Met season subcribers, and as the NYCO continues to dribble out details about casting, it’s time for La Cieca to start organizing her social diary for the opening of “The Season.” Where will Le Tout New-York be tooting this time around, cher public? Let La Cieca know in the poll after the jump.
Please note that you may vote for more than one “must see” operatic experience — if you can find any in the following list.
Scene from Luc Bondy’s production of Don Carlos
La Cieca, I wasn’t making any kind of case for the retention of the Zeffirelli Tosca. It was a mostly flippant comment spurred by the comment which immediately preceded mine.
All I would say is that the locations in which each of Tosca’s 3 acts are set all exist, I’ve visited them, and they are, to greater or lesser extents, opulent, hence a production that is faithful to the work’s composer and librettists does need opulent sets. But I personally have no problem with productions that do not stick religiously to the original locations and time-frames, so it isn’t something I care terribly deeply about, as long as the results are somehow effective.
The Royal Opera’s own Zeffirelli Tosca was replaced by a production that seemed equally traditional – in fact, it could almost be the same sets photographed from a different angle, so it seemed like pretty pointless exercise. I hope the Met does get something starker that throws the characters into more striking, immediate relief. That’s probably fairly likely, with Luc Bondy in charge. My own most pressing concern is that they manage to get Mattila to look good in a dark wig.
I picked Rosenkavalier. I can’t wait to hear Persson in person, pardon the pun.
gee, it is a sort of flat fall season, isn’t it? the Janacek a highlight of course, but I assume the “elite” will be fleeing Manhattan to avoid it and leaving the house empty. . .
Rosenkavalier and Trittico will probably have beautiful things to offer; I’m looking forward to Borodina in Damnation, and I think that Aida with Urmana, Zajick, Botha, and Guelfi might also be a well-sung performance; the Bondy Don Carlos excerpt might allow us to hope that slow stretches in the fall season could be filled with parterre.com contests that involve putting funny wigs on Thomas Hampson. . .
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Cocky–The logic here is flawed. Given, the original locations are opulent. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the work itself, as the “composer and librettists” conceived it, calls for opulent sets, any more than a production of Hamlet requires the producers to rebuild the castle at Elsinore. (This would be especially true if the production were to try to replicate the staging practices of Shakespeare’s time.)
I am not going to pretend to be an expert on early-twentieth-century operatic staging. But I would guess that Puccini would have expected to see the opera use mainly flats–in other words, settings a lot less opulent than Zeffirelli’s.
oops–meant to quote Cocky here:
All I would say is that the locations in which each of Tosca’s 3 acts are set all exist, I’ve visited them, and they are, to greater or lesser extents, opulent, hence a production that is faithful to the work’s composer and librettists does need opulent sets.
Well quoth, I did say I didn’t particularly care how it is staged, but I also don’t see how the logic is flawed – a flat can look opulent, can it not, if your conjecture that Puccini wouldn’t have expected much else is correct?
well, opulent in a different way from Z’s, perhaps. But I don’t think it necessarily stands to reason that because a dramatist places his work in a certain setting, he intends for the staging to reflect all the qualities of that setting.
In the case of Tosca, I would guess Puccini was less interested in opulence per se than in the contrast between the official image of the settings of the first two acts–the sanctity of the church, the august authority of the state– and the wordly doings that unfold within them. That’s where the drama lies–and the usefulness of the settings for the dramatist.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure the Castel Sant’Angelo qualifies as “opulent.” And certainly Puccini would have cast a cold eye on the showy and entirely unmusical scene changes that Z interpolated into the last act.
“But I don’t think it necessarily stands to reason that because a dramatist places his work in a certain setting, he intends for the staging to reflect all the qualities of that setting.”
That’s perfectly true. But we’re not just talking about ‘a dramatist’, we’re talking about Puccini. I think it’s a fairly safe bet that, given how specific his instructions were all over the score, Puccini expected the production to give a pretty good idea of the locations invoked. It’s also amusing to note that, for Act I for instance, Puccini consulted with church officials when the libretto was being drafted to find out what kind of liturgical preamble there ought to be to the Te Deum. When he found out that the answer was none, he asked the librettists to include one anyway, because he wanted a bit of a spectacle.
For me, castles tend to be ipso facto opulent, even if they aren’t stuffed full of frescos or gilding. Giant bronze angels and battlements have an opulence of their own, wouldn’t you say?
However, what I do keep trying to get across is the fact that I don’t give a monkey’s where Tosca is set, as long as it’s effective. I like what I’ve seen of the Decker Traviata, I loved the Robert Wilson Aida at the Royal Opera, and I’d look forward to seeing a Tosca given a similar treatment.
La Cieca,
Your analysis of the political situation in Rome during the Napleonic campaigns–the repressive ruthlessness of the RC Church, the reliance on pageantry to impress and placate the public, etc.–is on target, and Zeffirelli’s production of Tosca reflects this very well. We don’t need to have these things “pointed out” or “demonstrated” by a director. Pageantry is an important part of opera, and we get too little of it these days. Zeffirelli’s productions provide it, and they are being replaced with “interpretations” and “explanations” by directors that we may not need. I don’t, at any rate. For an example of a successful “interpretation” of an opera that was written for spectacular presentation, try the DVD of William Christie’s Les Boreades, directed by Carson. In this production, stylized costumes and props as well as strange choreography were substitued for heavy historical pageantry, and boy does it work. This is a rare occurrance, though, and the budget of the Salle Garnier didn’t hurt.