The importance of bad art
To cut to the chase: the creation of art is a risky business. There are few guarantees of quality, of profundity or of the longevity of the work’s appeal. The creation of any sort of art is therefore an experiment, and as with a scientific experiment, failure is a possible outcome.
Failure, then, is one source of bad art. But without the possibility of failure, success is at best limited to a narrow variation on what has already worked. But if we hope to see something original and news, we should realistically be prepared for the failed attempt.
More to to the point, we should not take the product of the failure to accomplish a goal as the intended goal itself. Artists do not set out to create bad art. It seems unlikely that an artist like Luc Bondy, who despite his relative obscurity in the United States, has been directing in the theater and the opera house for over 30 years, should continue in such a career if all he has to offer is shock value and disrespect. This is like a man who hates buildings dedicating his life to architecture; it just doesn’t make sense.
Similarly, even so reviled (by me, I mean) a singer as Renée Fleming surely doesn’t deliberately set out to annoy me or Bellini or Lerner and Loewe. Her conscious goal must surely be to sing expressively.
What is possible is for an artist to have poor taste, or for his talent to fail him when presented with a task that baffles him, or for that artist’s work simply not to appeal to a certain segment of the audience. But for some reason there seems to be a divide in the perception of the seriousness of creative artists like composers, as opposed to recreative artists, like singers or the dreaded stage directors. There are plenty of music lovers who, for whatever reasons, profess to detest the music of Wagner, and perhaps an equal group who cannot abide Puccini. But how many people say, “Wagner was deliberately smearing mud on music” or “Puccini had no talent, so he resorted to shock effects?”
Well, to tell the truth, out there on the interwebs you could probably find a few people who would endorse both these statements and more, but the only reaction I can offer to them is pity, because in their bitterness and prejudice they are missing out on some magnificent music. For the the larger group here and elsewhere who are ready, even eager, to condemn the work of an artist as “trash” sight unseen, again I can only feel pity, alloyed perhaps with a tinge of hope that one day they might have the scales fall from their eyes.
Though, admittedly, it’s perhaps harder to see good intentions when they’re not very well executed.
See above for why I consult and sometimes participate in this blog. Ars Gratia Artis.
speaking of…
why does Anna Netrebko not sing in Italy? I know this sounds like I’m putting a really heavy weight on the Italian audience but since a lot of articles on parterre.com have italian titles and a lot of comments on those articles have italian phrases im only starting to learn, i reckon there’s some gravitas to it.
So, how come the Met divas are not the favorites of the Italian houses as well?
But who are the favorites of the Italian houses, then?
well
there’s Desiree Rancatore
there’s Elena Mosuc
there’s still June Anderson (i think)
there’s Fiorenza Cedolins
there’s Mariella Devia
One other issue should perhaps be mentioned here: did “Whoever-Decides-These-Things” (the Met has no formal artistic director, so God only knows who is responsible for deciding what, any longer) simply hire the wrong director? Bondy has a huge following and vast experience (much of it quite successful) in Europe. But when commissioned to work for the Met, he knew he was facing (and had accepted the responsibility to serve) a more conservative audience than many to which he had become accustomed. Did this knowledge, perhaps lead him to alter (or at least soften a tad) his “vision” of the opera into a “half-vision” that stood little chance of working well from the get-go? I would direct my criticism of the Met’s new “Tosca” production to management’s inappropriate choice of stage director, not to the “through-a-glass-darkly” vision that he actually put on the stage.
Brava, La Cieca! What a great post.
One also should remember that sometimes external forces in a director’s life will affect the outcome of a new production, e.g., if his spouse has left him, if his parent is fighting a terminal disease or has just passed away. Unlike a singer or conductor who in such circumstances can withdraw and be replaced relatively easily, it is not so simple for a director of a new production to step aside and have someone else take over the work.
speaking of bad art, here it is the worst
“So, how come the Met divas are not the favorites of the Italian houses as well?”
Non
What I meant to say before I accidentally clicked the submit button is that none of the current Met divas (i.e. Fleming and Netrebko) are popular in Italy because the Italians don’t want them. We all know what happened to Fleming when she did Borgia at La Scala in 1998.
Renee said that Renata Scotto advised her to sing only recitals in Italy and never to sing a opera there again.
javier how come? with regards to the renee recitals i mean.
i know this may not sound good to some but is there a premier bel canto interpreter today?
what about a premier verdi interpreter? cappuccilli was one of them…
coz so far the ones at the met (i mean the superstars) arent really premier exponents of anything… unless you count mattila for german.. (not even…maybe Salome)