European males talk among themselves
La Cieca sat in on the “Cognitive Theater” discussion tonight at the New York Public Library, and the main impression she came away with is that Patrice Chéreau is a very quiet, soft-spoken man who happens to be a genius. (She was expecting something more fiery, but like many of the great divas, it seems this stage director saves his “flame” for the work.)
Luc Bondy came off as a serious artist who either has run out of particularly interesting things to say in his work or else (maybe more likely) not a good fit for directing Tosca. Neither he nor Chéreau are in any sense opera queens, which is maybe more off-putting to other people than it is to me.
Bondy did say that he thought (and he seemed to be weighing his words carefully here) that Tosca is a “wonderful and awful” opera with some “completely stupid” moments: a “good, thrilling” piece but a “trivial” story. The weak moments of the opera can be glossed over, like bad food with a rich sauce, which Bondy said was, as he understood it, Zeffirelli’s approach. (The takeaway snipe of the evening was in reference to the Zef: “He should remember Puccini wrote this opera, not Zeffirelli.”)
He wanted, he said, to try for a “human” approach, to make the action more believable. This is the source of Tosca’s finding the knife early, for example: Bondy feels that as written the melodrama is too “convenient.” He added that he did not realize that in New York Tosca was like the Bible.
A lot of back and forth about booing, and Chéreau was rather gallant here in recalling the Bayreuth Ring, though it’s scary to think that this was now 33 years ago! (Scary to me, I mean. He seemed all right with it.) Nobody wants to make a scandal, they all assured us, what they try to do is to tell the story. Bondy did say that the audience reaction was not particulary important because by the time the audience sees the production, his work is completely done. He added a funny analysis of why booing sounds so loud even when only a few people do it: the “r” in “bravo” interrupts the sound, whereas the “oo” in boo projects very well.
Bartlett Sher was a little more PC and, in the American style, very verbal about his concept for Les Contes d’Hoffmann. His point of departure is Offenbach’s outsider status as a Jew; he sees Hoffmann’s successive romances as attempts at assimilating into mainstream society. The production for the Met will have something of a 1920s feel because of a connection to Kafka that I didn’t quite get.
Again, Chéreau didn’t have any real “aha!” moments, but he sounded like he was very in touch with From the House of the Dead, how when he first looked at the work he expected a lot of “despair” but was surprised by how “full of hope and life” the work is. He took on directing it because Pierre Boulez asked him to collaborate on the conductor’s last operatic production. (Gelb says he invited Boulez to the Met but he declined.) Chéreau did emphasize that the Met production was not a revival in the conventional sense but rather a reworking of similar ideas, stimulated in particular by the different abilities and qualities of the New York cast, specifically Peter Mattei.
The interlocutor, Paul Holdengräber, got things off to a bit of a grating start for me when he drawled, “As de La Rochefoucauld once said…” and he could have spared us the anecdote about how his father was a claquer in Vienna. But mostly he asked the expected questions about missions and stuff.
Few revelations were forthcoming from Peter Gelb: he wants to build new audiences but not alienate old audiences, he does not believe in scandal for scandal’s sake, success of a production is measure in terms of audience interest over the course of a number of seasons. Some boilerplate about the success of the HD telecasts. The Met standard is the best voices in the world, the finest orchestra, heard in their full glory.
The questions from the audience ran the usual gamut from the incomprehensible to the asinine, but there was at least one good, straightforward query as to the future of the iconic Zeffirelli Bohème. Gelb answered, “There is no production at the Met that will not eventually be redone.”
Please see also the observations of squirrel and rommie. And Daniel Wakin was there too.
Cieca we were in the same space…
thank you la cieca, sorry for rambling about this on your site before you got a chance to weigh in, but I’m flattered that we saw some things similarly!
cieca,
These guys are, to say the very least, “not opera queens”. I don’t care if people are queens or not, but do you not share my frustration that opera is constantly being entrusted to people who do not love opera?
In Bondy’s case, I felt he more or less showed his cards here, implying that he was at least ambivalent about Tosca’s merit as a piece, perhaps feeling somewhat derogatory toward it.
And more specifically, who are the opera directors who “love opera” (and please don’t say Zeffirelli) and why aren’t they working at the Met?
No problem, La Cieca obviously has a longer commute than you youngsters! Probably the most striking element here is how great a disconnect is between a director’s vision and his ability to verbalize it.
The rommie question was about the only sensible one, and it elicited what felt like the least guarded answer of the night from Gelb. Well played!
Edited to pick up on squirrel’s further question. I wouldn’t say that any of these guys “doesn’t love” opera, just that it’s not the narrowly focused kind of love that opera specialists have. I think you can say, “What attracts me to opera is its expressive power as theater” without having to specify that it’s a whole quantum leap of greatness different from other forms of performance, spoken theater and film.
What did seem apparent was that Tosca was not really Bondy’s cup of tea. Should it have occurred to Gelb or someone else at the Met that he might not be a good fit for the material?
the most striking element here is how great a disconnect is between a director’s vision and his ability to verbalize it.
Yes, couldn’t agree more!! This is what I was mumbling to myself on the helicopter ride home to bay ridge!
(What was the “Rommie’s question”, sorry?)
La Nostra Signora Mercedes Bass looked extra IN YOUR FACE TONIGHT in her very very very red dress with sequin-encrusted black jacket. (can you encrust sequins into a jacket?)
She did not laugh at anything the audience was laughing at.
Squirrel, the boheme question.
You were the guy who asked the Boheme question?
Mercedes Bass was there?
I need to catch up on my.. something.
La Bass was pretty hard to miss. She arrived lateish (just before the talk started) and extremely dressy, let’s just say, for the public library. She left just before the end of the talk: dinner plans?
Leave it to me to miss the thing that is hard to miss. I do everything the hard way!
Being trapped, as I am, in my own mind, I can’t help but flash on Mrs. Parker’s “The Little Hours,” when I see a La Rochefoucauld tag. “It’s only a question of minutes before I’m going to be pretty darned good and sick of La Rochefoucauld, once and for all. La Rochefoucauld this and La Rochefoucauld that.”
p.s. thanks, glad of an account of this. I was at 1/2 of Barbiere.
Wow Maury, you just out Holdengraebered Holdengraeber.
did you walk out?
I was there as well and all I can say is I want to have Patrice Chéreau’s lovechild.
you want to have an unshaven, potbellied, haggard love child?
didn’t you think Nico Muhly looked cute? But a bit sad. He always wears this drabbish but adorable long sleeved black shirt. I wonder how his opera is going to sound… im assuming very atonal or just something wherein the melody is very very hard to find
i dont usually find tots like nico muhly cute unless they have a pussy.
i thought he was a post-ironic post-classical minimalist, not an oldschool uptown composer.
daniel wakin’s version is here:http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/the-opera-goes-to-the-library-and-the-talk-turns-to-what-else-tosca/
I don’t speak czech, but apparently the opera “Tales from the House of the Dead” is on offer this fall…
@17: how’s this?
mmm calico!
“On another matter, Mr. Sher said he approached his new production of Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman,” which opens at the Met on Dec. 3, by focusing on the composer’s place in society as a Jew who was struggling to be accepted, “to try to find his way into the group.” Hoffman reflects that struggle by trying to find acceptance with the women he falls in love with, Mr. Sher said.”
This (from the sound of it ludicrous) approach is classic TIMES-bait.
I wonder if Sher thinks that E. T. A. Hoffmann was a co-religionist of Abbie Hoffmann?
Mr. Bondy, it may now be time for you to be quiet. Stupid opera? Tosca? MORE human, less convenient ? Tosca finally makes a big decision, to KILL someone and she just sits. A butter knife? Jump on sofas? Trun scarpia into bertold brecht decadent caricature? Real enough yet?
No one had a gun to your head. You obviously are not a fit. And kindly remember, senile has nothing to do with age. Puccini wrote it, and those little lines in italian in between scenes and throughout the music.
MEAN something. You goofed when you thought New York will accept anything. They won’t.
La Cieca writes:
“Some boilerplate about the success of the HD telecasts. The Met standard is the best voices in the world, the finest orchestra, heard in their full glory.”
Yes, in a movie theater.
The Met standard is the best voices in the world, the finest orchestra, heard in their full glory.
I’m sorry, I can not take comments like these when weighted against the evidence:
Urmana as Aida (she would be better as Amneris)
Nebby as Lucia and Anna Bolena
Giordani as Calaf (add Edgardo for good measure)
Villazon in anything he sang there
Quoting: (The takeaway snipe of the evening was in reference to the Zef: “He should remember Puccini wrote this opera, not Zeffirelli.”)
—
Interestingly enough some advice they may want to take and bear in mind for their future productions? Probably not.
In the immortal words of Werner Egk: “Weather is permanent.” (You earn extra points if you can name the source of that truism; quoting the source from memory you win triple points and some lovely parting gifts. Listening to that source provides more pleasure than listening to stage directors talk an opera. In opera, talking the talk and walking the walk do not genius make.)
Ooooh – I feel some Rochefoucauld coming on :
‘Peu de gens sont assez sages pour préférer le blâme qui leur est utile à la louange qui les trahit. “
Bondy reference to Zef: “He should remember Puccini wrote this opera, not Zeffirelli.”
If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle beige I don’t know what!
re:#15…
To quote Amadeus, “Looks don’t concern me, Maestro. Only talent interests a woman of taste.”
The Hoffman concept is particularly ludicrous since Offenbach converted to Catholicism in 1844, so not only wasn’t he trying to gain acceptance as a Jew, he repudiated his religion.
I just got around to reading TT in this past Sunday’s NY Times. I thought it was interesting that he was critical of Bondy and the Tosca, and even managed to throw in a subtle dig at Mary Zimmerman’s La Sonnambula.
Perhaps the HOFFMANN production will be a reflection on the experience of becoming accepted as an assimilated Jew, rather than a repudiation of Judaism.
marquise, stella: I hate to rain on your parade of prejudice, but a look at Chereau’s or Bondy’s body of work both in the opera house and in other venues demonstrates that they do pretty much practice what they preach, i.e., they try to find and express the truth of the given work. Part of the reason last night’s talk was less than scintillating is that neither of them have “concepts” to pitch.
There is no “concept” to be seen in these videos, except the concept that the singers should be expressive actors.
The Royal Opera has just announced that Rolando Villazon won’t be singing Des Grieux to Nebsy’s Manon in the new production in June 2010. He thinks the role too strenuous while he is recovering from surgery. Vittorio Grigolo is replacing him.
Cieca,
Sorry to disagree with you – but if that isn’t a concept staging I don’t know what is. They may be acting on the emotions of the characters but Hercules was a demi-god at that point, and not a (German?) soldier. And Dejanira is anything but a bored middle class American housewife. Dejanira maybe a bored housewife but she ain’t American. And that is what I saw.
To quote Roberta Alexander: “The “concept” is not for me, because there is no concept. It’s something they have brought in themselves.”
I can’t say I’m a converted fan of Zef but I find him more true, whatever that might be as we’ve discussed before, to the composers/librettist’s intentions.
I guess I come across as a traditionalist. Maybe I am. I admit that traditional / come scritto productions can also be boring if the director has little imagination.
All I’m saying is that I’m not convinced that IS Hercules and his consort Dejanira. (Not to mention the Bondy homeless people in Act 1 of Don Carlos dressed in furs!)
Sorry.
marquise: We are obviously speaking different languages here, which is pretty indicative of how little variety of operatic stage direction we get in the US that you think “not toga” = “concept.”
The questions from the audience ran the usual gamut from the incomprehensible to the asinine.
LOL. I always cringe when they open the floor to questions. Brilliant, La Cieca!
LC – I agree that there should be more variety in staging. Eg the ENO did a Turandot in the time of Mao (?) with Turandot as the HIV virus. Also the Hytner Xerxes and the Vick Mitridate make very strong cases for updating while staying somehow true to the spirit of the work (as I understand it). I’m just not that convinced by Bondy’s take.
But there is a difference between “I’m not convinced” and “this is a concept staging.” It’s silly to devaluate a useful word like “concept” to the point it means nothing more specific than “icky.”
There’s a fascinating story about Chereau in the autobiography of Wolfgang Wagner. It seems there was one night of SIEGFRIED at Bayreuth when the lead tenor was injured and could not go on. On very short notice, he sang the role from the wings (a la Carlo Guelfi…) while Chereau himself (who rather looked the part in those days) mimed and mouthed it onstage in a blond wig. Wolfgang said Chereau acted it with great emotion and it was a moving, memorable evening.
Remembering that Chereau had been criticized for not reading music, and preparing for rehearsals by listening to recordings, I was impressed to see that he had ultimately learned the music and German text so thoroughly that he was able to pull off such a feat–and with one of the longest roles in opera.
Bondy’s comments about Tosca bring up an interesting question: Should a director love a work if he’s going to direct it? My first reaction is yes, one needs be passionate about the opera one is directing. Otherwise, one’s disdain for the “awful” parts of the work will come across in cynical staging.
On the other hand, what if the work in question is universally acknowledged as problematic, but still worth staging once in a while? If a company wants to stage one of those “problematic” works, should they try to find a director who loves the work through and through? Or is it OK to engage a director who recognises the work’s weaknesses but is going to make a game effort?
prunier – interesting story! i’d like to read that bio, was it in english?
Chereau has not done a lot of opera work over the years at all… Cieca calls him a genius… I however remember a Cosi fan Tutte from 5 years ago at the Palais Garnier which was pretty lame. He had the buffo scenes spill out into the audience, with characters running up and down the aisles and then back onto a catwalk to the stage. I thought it was pretty pointless, not to mention totally unoriginal – reminiscent of ambitious college opera productions and a virtual encyclopedia of director gimmicks…. the set had that Luc Bondy-esque mix of unexplained anachronism, it was set in what looked like an opera house rehearsal room (!) in the modern era (!!) and a huge DEFENSE DE FUMER sign. And the characters in modern dress.
This was the one that Daniel Harding quit mid-rehearsals.
I guess I’m not following the Marquise’s examples of the Hytner Serse and the Vick Mitridate as examples of “updating.” Both are done in 18th c. dress (granted that the costuming in the Mitridate is particularly stylized). True, both operas take place B.C., but I have never seen nor heard of a production that set them during that period. Doing an opera in a setting around the time of its composition is pretty tame and commonplace. Surely, “updating” is most often used in reference to setting a production in a contemporary milieu (a la the Vick Boheme featured in a Youtube clip on Opera Chic today)?
Yes, the idea of treating the operatic character of Hoffmann like a Kleinzach (a mocked outsider) and “a little Jew equated with Offenbachselbt” as so many of the pre- and post-Nazi theater people used to call him is way over the hill and has been foisted of on audiences by many directors over the years, including more recent Euro-trash producers who needed to justify their concepts with long program notes. The preliminary MET announcements that Sher will focus on Offenbach’s Hebraic ancestry bode that their director is way off base with that. Furthermore, the idea that Hoffmann was a man who could not deal well with the outside world has been done in numerous productions. As for Kafka, they might be better served to produce Gunther Schuller’s THE VISITATION. Perhaps the MET titles people can offer various electronic versions of Kafka’s works during the performances of HOFFMANN. I loved the comment in No. 3 above about the tragedy that the production of “opera is constantly being entrusted to people who do not love opera.” It is indeed extremely frustrating.
correction I meant to say characters in Period Dress, that’s right, milling around a concrete rehearsal hall with fluorescent lighting, wearing the 18th Century costumes. OY
Harding did NOT quit the Chereau Cosi; he conducted it at Aix where it premiered as can be seen on the DVD. He did not conduct the revival in Paris because (I read) the orchestra protested him and was replaced by Gustav Kuhn.
Yes, there is an English translation of the Wolfgang Wagner book available. It’s called ACTS.
Not a particularly well-written book; the structure is awkward and he reveals very little about his personal life and relationships. Goes on at great length about his interpretations of his grandfather’s operas. And he seems determined to correct what he feels has been inaccurate press and public opinion over the years with regard to Bayreuth. The book mainly focuses on the administrative side of running the festival over the decades, and is useful enough as a record of that.
@ Stella (27) “If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle beige I don’t know what!”
I laughed, Stell, but I don’t think it’s true. Bondy isn’t the one going around telling newspapers that other directors just don’t get Tosca. Bondy hasn’t asserted some kind of authorship over Tosca any more than any other director by putting his vision of it onstage. He just happens to have made some choices that a lot of people, for reasons I have to squint to get, consider radical and disrespectful &c. &c.
Q&A sessions really are the worst. They’re usually a few words meant to suggest a question tacked onto an opinion or, in many cases, a personality disorder/cognitive deficiency. It would be alright the longsome charade of questioning could be condensed, say: “I was wondering: I don’t like your Tosca.” “I don’t have a question but I’d like to speak for fifteen minutes about my nostalgia for the Old Met. Don’t you think?”
kashania: Or is it OK to engage a director who recognises the work’s weaknesses but is going to make a game effort?
I agree with you, in theory, but I worry that it’s very difficult to define “game effort.” I don’t think that a director must adore a work to craft a valid and worthwhile production, but if a director has contempt for an opera, he or she shouldn’t accept the assignment. Bondy’s feelings might not rise (or fall) to the level of contempt, but after reading reports here of his comments at the NYPL event, I did wonder why he bothered to accept the gig. If the Met wanted Bondy so badly, couldn’t they have found another opera that perhaps excited him more?
Hippolyte – I said he quit the producton. Did he not? He did. Case closed.
I find Chereau’s 1976 Bayreuth take on The Ring enduring.
Handel certainly didn’t use togas.
squirrel, I didn’t see this Cosi production so I can’t comment on its specific values. I do think the term “unexplained anachronism” deserves some examination besides your quick dismissal.
Just how much in art is supposed to be “explained,” anyway? Is there not supposed to be some room for the audience to puzzle over possible meanings and even come to different conclusions, so long as the process of witnessing the art is an engaging and pleasurable one? It seems to me that “anachronism” is to you what the peasants in furs in Don Carlos is to the marquise, i.e., an excuse for a snap judgment.
Further, I don’t understand what you mean by “original” in this context. Is every theatrical idea in the history of man to be attempted once and then discarded because it is no longer novel? More to the point, surely, would be an examination of whether the technique was used in a way to illuminate the text or to make the performance more engaging. I mean, it’s pretty much a cliche for an operatic soprano to fall to her knees in a moment of ecstasy, but when Leonie Rysanek took the plunge, it was transcendent.
The “what,” I think, is not nearly so important as the “how.”
You are right, and you are right. actually “The What is not as important as the How” is something I have long believed in deeply and I’m glad you say it. I didn’t mean to dismiss out of hand these techniques, but I suppose I did because I cannot substantiate why I thought this production failed the way it did. You weren’t there, and we aren’t there now, so it’s pretty much my word against… nobody’s.
In my humble opinion, the running around in the audience, and on the catwalk, was unstructured, unrevealing, and uninspired – in other words it reeked of Gimmick.
As for the anachronism of the set and the costumes, I can say that I was not personally knocked out by any particular insights that this approach illuminated, but this is again my own opinion.
On the matter of originality, no certainly I do not think that ideas should be discarded after one go around, or made somehow proprietary of the person who originated it. The usual reason for the period garb against either a modern – or a blank, stark – set is to “show the depth and humanity of the character, by removing the context and engaging the viewer’s imagination with the universality of the situation”. Or some kind of Apologia like that, at least this is the rough reasoning given by umpteen directors who have done it, in my experience.
A better question is not whether ideas should ever get a second go around, is – Should these ideas get a 50th or 60th go around? And at what point do they constitute a sorry and lazy substitution for a craftsmanlike, earnest attempt at realizing the opera as it actually was written?
I would suggest, squirrel, that at least in the minds of these directors, “a craftsmanlike, earnest attempt at realizing the opera as it actually was written” is exactly what they are doing. The crux of course is defining “actually was,” and good luck with that.
#51 — always reminds me of that expression used by an ancient Roman dealer in luxury shmatte — “cashmere in togas”.
a harmless and relativist approach, fine.
but you seem to wish to defend any liberties a director takes with a piece, as long as they are indeed liberties.
I am on the other hand concerned with the quality of some of these ideas, which subjective of course, but a very serious matter.
personally I’d rather see Cosi fan Titty set in Beirut in the 80s, than staged using a bunch of tired pseudointellectual cliches. Of course, I would really just prefer it be staged well.
squirrel, you may consider the case closed if you wish but clearly your implication was the Harding “quit” the production (one he had already conducted the initial run of) because of Chereau (if that wasn’t your intent, why mention it at all?). And everything I read suggested he didn’t quit but rather was “relieved” of his duties.
I think, squirrel, if you take a look back at some of the Gay City News pieces from the late Kellogg era at NYCO, you will see that JJ (with whom La Cieca shares many things including opinions) was pretty rough on a lot of directors who too liberties. Who can forget the pregnant Lucia di Lammermoor (the one where it snowed indoors the whole opera) or the Alcina with the jazz dancing tree creatures?
One can really get dizzy jumping between our beloved Parterre and Opera Chic -- Look what we’ve been missing and have for the future if this tenor is careful with his talents:
hippolyte – you are correct that the reasons for Harding’s exit was not the staging. He also left, ie: was not removed.
Cieca,
I would say though you slant in favor of Regieoper, I do believe you to be non-partisan and take each on a case-by-case basis. I try to do the same, though I perhaps slant toward the “traditional”
Quanto Painy Fakor: Loved those Boheme clips. Clearly I need to visitg operachic more often.
The question of whether a director should love opera had me thinking of the way that biographers approach historical subjects who might be significant but who are pretty unsavory. It seems to me that a biographer, even if writing about a person who is detestable, should a) love the form and craft of biography in general; and b) even if he can’t stand the individual personally, he must still be able to say why said person was significant or dominant on the historical stage.
muede – yes, to say the very least. but I think it goes further than that. I appreciate the idea that Gelb presents, which is to bring directors from theater, film, broadway into the opera house in order to learn a new theatrical point of view/ method of working/ etc. But we seem to be offering ALL new productions these days to people who do not have any sentimentality for these operas at all. I think that a director who at least knows the traditions of opera is better equipped to deal with the problems inherent in the piece than someone who has no vested interest in the operatic art form.
Your biographer metaphor is problematic, too, because a person can be important and inflluential without being savory or good.
I personally resent Bondy coming to the Met and saying “well, tosca is half crap, so let’s be agitators and give them a hyper-realistic version IN ORDER to show them that it’s at least half crap”. That’s not what we hired him to do. (The royal we, of course!)
What does “sentimentality for these operas” mean?
I suppose I mean having grown up listening to them, or having come to them at some point passionately.
In other words, the opposite of “Q: Hey Luc, ever conducted an opera? A; How much is it going to pay?”
Or Robert Spano being asked to conduct The Ring “because he hates Wagner” (Speight Jenkins)
er, directed…
William Friedkin has received good reviews for his productions at L.A. Opera, and most people still think of him as primarily a film director first. Woody Allen also got good notices for his first production last year. I don’t know that directors need to have a sentimentality about any particulars operas but rather an respectful interest in the opera form and the possibilities of opera. A director could be well-matched even if he or she hasn’t heard or seen the opera before the invitation to direct. But then I think they should (meaning, I would HOPE they would) develop a respect for the work.
And by respect, I don’t mean slavish adherence to tradition. More a lack of “that’s crap” crossing their minds.
Ah, I see, “sentimentality” is a variant on the old traditional “straw man” theme.
Some opera queens are good opera directors, others are not. La Cieca has been around plenty of queens who sucked opera from their mother’s teat, but whose idea of directing consists of sitting in the back of the theater chain-smoking and sighing, “Oh, dahling, if only you could have seen Zinka in this paht.”
Same with non-opera queens. Some good, some lousy. The proof of the fucking, as La Cieca has said before, is in the pudding.
Note also: if there is a bigger opera queen in the world than Speight Jenkins, it must be a tranny who uses the partitur of Fedora as a vagina. And yet, dear old Speight goes and hires somebody who hates Wagner. Those queens, who know what they’ll do?
“respect for traditions” never crossed my lips.
i agree with our hostess cupcake. a certain opera queen (may I use that term inoffensively if I am not one?) from yesteryear in cincinnati comes to mind…
cute loge reference!
@ 59
I heard Guèze sing Romeó in a concert performance at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and he was quite spectacular. He has a lovely voice that sounds especially good in his native tongue…
@59 & 72 — I saw Guèze at Operalia a couple of years ago, and he was superb in Gounod (Polyeucte) and Halévy (La Juive — far too heavy for him, but still thrilling). He came second, but got the audience prize. The first prizewinner among the men was David Lomeli, not in the same class, but — by coincidence in a competition founded by Domingo — a young Mexican on the young singers’ programme in Los Angeles …
I just saw David Lomeli in Gianni Schicci, as Rinuccio. He was good, if at times overwhelmed by the orchestra. I suspect he’ll get stronger with maturity. His acting was slight, mostly stood around looking good in his white pants. But he’s young and still in the opera training program at SFO. I’m sure he’ll develop in all areas. I’ve no doubt he will.
The problem for me is that Bondy’s alterations did not make the characters more human, just more preposterous. Their story no longer made sense. Is this an improvement? I’d say not. That his production was also hideous to look at and will be difficult (impossible?) for other sopranos to inhabit does not underline its utility to the Met.
(For the rest, http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/10/tosca_at_the_me.php )
I’m going with Alex Ross’s recommendation: The Met should ask a director if s/he likes opera, and if s/he likes this opera, and if the answer is No, should move further down the Rolodex. And Mr. Bondy plainly does not like Tosca or (I’d argue) understand it. Sentimentality (I hope) has nothing to do with it. Sentiment, possibly.
(I wasn’t crazy about that Hercules, supra, either.)
Harding conducted the Chéreau Cosi in Aix with the Mahler CHamber Orchestra (with which he has a long-standing relationship). When the production moved to Paris, it was with the Opéra orchestra and he complained it was not up to his exalted standards and resigned. Then he thought better of it and said he would after all agree to conduct despite the quality of the orchestra, and then the orchestra threatened to go on strike if he was reinstated, so Mortier had to find another conductor. That’s what I heard from someone who works at the Opéra, anyway. I saw it in Aix – it was a disappointing production and very moderately sung (apart from Elina Garanca’s Dorabella).
#75 Hans Lick: Thanks for the link to John Yohalem’s brilliant, incisive, (dare I say “penetrating”?) analysis of the Luc Bondy Tosca in Opera Today. Any aspiring opera critic should read this as a model of how to do it. I admire in particular his point that here Puccini has fashioned a finely-tuned mechanism both musically and dramatically – (yes, Mr. Bondy, Puccini didn’t just write tunes, he was a consummate dramatist too) and that you mess with that mechanism at your peril. One peripheral question, though, Hans: why did you float this piece on your blog without attribution, as if it were yours?
@77 Valzacchi:
Thanks much for the kind comments!
and
HL:JY as LaC:JJ
but
zitto, zitto, piano, piano, nessun conosce!
I’m going with Alex Ross’s recommendation [etc. etc.]
I yield to no one in my admiration of Alex Ross, which is second only to my admiration of the Yohalem. But this statement borders on being parochial nonsense.
No, I don’t think you have to love the material you’re working with so long as you are engaged by it. Those are two very different things. In fact, the problem with love is that it tends to gloss over flaws and so can’t be sufficiently critical. The director who blindly loves opera and just adores Tosca warts and all may well be content with doing the same old same old, because, after all, it’s Tosca, and who am I to tamper with my beloved Tosca’s perfection? So long as the soprano ends up groveling on the floor at some point during “Vissi d’arte,” the audience is going to roar, so why bother?
Very often people who collaborate the most successfully are those whose relationship is adversarial, in a friendly, collegial way, perhaps, but taut with the tension drawn between very different viewpoints. So why can’t we imagine a similarly adversarial relationship between director and material?
Our JJ directed Tosca once and found it a very problematic work, much more difficult to do in an honest way than, say, Traviata or Butterfly, and in no league of comparison with Don Giovanni or some of the bel canto works, which practically stage themselves. Now, that’s just JJ, but he’s probably in the minority here of having at least attempted to solve some of the problems of this (yes) problematic work, so, well, maybe he has some glimmer of the problems facing a Luc Bondy who is trying (not, admittedly, in many ways, successfully) to make interesting theater out of an uneven text.
But to say, “well, first, we must weed out anyone who’s not an opera queen, and then X out the names of anyone without Tosca fanboy credentials” — that, I think, is the reason opera is in such a sorry state here in the US (and, yes, a lot of other places too). Art that’s strictly by fans, for fans may be swathed in all sorts of sincerity, but that doesn’t prevent it from coming off like quaint kitsch to the non-initiate.
Another view from La C’s former publication, Gay City News:
http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2009/10/02/gay_city_news/arts/music/doc4ac633bebae46171263476.txt
Ok sure, I see your point. What is the midway point between Luc Bondy and an Opera Queen? Someone not completely beholden to operatic tradition and cliche, but also someone who knows the art form?
Hans, please tell John that I very much enjoyed his Tosca review. It was well-reasoned and explained his support or lack thereof (depending on the specific topic of discussion) with evidence. I’m only sorry that this is the first piece of his that I’ve read.
John Yohalem’s review says it all. It’s brilliant!
squirrel, this is a difficult question, because everyone has a different definition of “knows the art form.”
Some would define this term as “obviously the only action possible that would coordinate with this music is the placing of two candles and a crucifix, and that’s perfect because that’s what the stage direction says anyway.”
Others would go a lot farther afield and say, “what we have here is a lot of notes and words, and their relationship is ambiguous (notes to words and even notes to notes), so let’s see if there’s a different possible meaning there from the one everyone just assumes.”
The first “type,” I think you can say, will likely be the more reliable director, but the second “type” is a gamble, i.e., maybe you’ll win back a lot more that way or maybe you’ll lose it all. But they both can be said to “know the art form.”
There’s this notion out there (not you, squirrel, but there are others) that Luc Bondy and Patrice Chereau are are some kind of black turtlenecked dilettantes who never saw an opera before and wouldn’t know which end of the score goes up, and that’s, like I said before, parochial.
It’s a very American sort of attitude that there is theater over here and opera over there. It’s certainly the case currently in New York that the opera audience is not a theater audience and vice versa, but this is not true elsewhere in the world, and it wasn’t even always true here. What caused this schism in America between opera and theater I don’t really know, but it’s neither necessary nor, in my opinion, healthy.
Or, short answer: yes, there is a middle ground of directors who are conversant with opera and yet not ghettoized into the opera house, and it’s with members of this group that I think Peter Gelb is trying to build his new productions. Which is not to say that I think this “trying” is always successful; it’s not. But at the same time it’s not the Goetterdaemmerung the pearl-clutchers are shrieking about.
blush blush blush blush blush blush blush blush
– on behalf of JY, who never does.
And on behalf of Alex Ross, he made that sublime remark about the Zimmerman Sonnambula, not about the Bondy Tosca. And while I certainly wouldn’t envy the job of anyone given the chance to stage Sonnambula nowadays (I’m holding out for the Ring myself — any takers? I want to do it all in 18th century dress and powdered wigs, set on the staircase of the Wurzburg Residenz), I do think Miss Z was the wrong man for the Bellini biz.
Alright then, good points all around. I know that Bondy and Chereau certainly know their way around the opera repertoire and you are right to point out that they are indeed the middle specimen. (That does not mean that they AREN’T black-turtlenecked dilettantes, however. I have begun to wonder if Luc Bondy isn’t one of those guys who made a whole career of dilettantism. Admit it, there ARE THOSE!)
Through all of these very interesting discussions, I find myself no longer caring really about whether the details of an opera are carried forth in the way the composer might have imagined it, and being really much more frustrated- by the absence of Personenregie and the ineptitude with which supposed “theater-people” fail to help the singers find a believable performance within their own skin (perhaps not just believable in a diagetic way, but believable all around, as an expression of SOME IDEA). If we meld these worlds of theater and opera, then the opera should be learning something from these wizards who were nursed on Brecht and Pantomime and Stanislavsky and god knows what else. Where is all that wisdom???
We can safely all agree (?) that Regieoper must not become Set and Lighting Designer Opera. Because then the singers will turn it back into Opera Queen Opera.
I attended a class tonight given by the SF Opera, the last of a series of classes about the various aspects of staging opera. Tonight, the guest was a director who has staged productions of Don Pasquale (Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar) and Der Rosenkavalier (Danish National Opera). One of the things he said that I found interesting is that he and many other directors like challenges, and so he would rather stage a “Lucia” (which he found problematic) than a “Boheme” (which he says is a perfect opera). For him, everything about Boheme is composed, every movement and everything the singer needs to do has music composed for it. In this case, if directors just follow the score and stay out of the way, you’ll end up with a great opera.
Re: Lucia, he finds many parts that don’t communicate to the audience what is happening or what has happened, or doesn’t allow enough time for things to have happened before we’re told about them (and there were other “problems” he named). The music, he didn’t have any problem with, but the dramaturgy (his word) was often confusing. The challenge in finding a workable (for him) staging would lead him to accept a directing gig for it, even though he doesn’t now “love” it.
This didn’t surprise me, once he answered the question (I raised), because two weeks earlier, when 3 musicians from the SFO orchestra were the panelists, someone from the class asked them to name their favorite composer. Unanimously, they said Richard Strauss. (A gasp went round the room.) “Why?” was the follow-up question. Answer: Because it’s challenging, and when you master it, you have a sense of real accomplishment. One of the musicians, a horn player, also listed Puccini (even though he can find himself sitting for 45 minutes during a Puccini opera with nothing to do) because the music is so beautiful.
cruz
thank you for a very interesting report!
if only we could have such a revealing nuts-and-bolts opera directing discussion in New York City! Maybe one day…
It’s true, now that I think of it, that Boheme does sort of stage itself, if the director is wise enough to listen to the music. It does not surprise me that anyone would choose Strauss as their favorite or most rewarding composer. It is music that has been extraordinarily wrought from a dramatic perspective, and text that has been carefully measured for musicality, in almost every case. Strauss is the best (disclosure: Crazed Strauss Lover here!) and never disappoints.
squirrel, I’ll have to take another look/listen to Boheme. I’ve seen it live once, and listened to it quite a few times, but I’ve yet to “get” it. It’s an enjoyable evening of music, has some gorgeous arias, but it all seems rather small-stakes to me. I don’t know why. I prefer that other consumption opera (I know have 3 recordings of it), although I know I shouldn’t compare them.
In Boheme’s favor, where I’m concerned, is that I once didn’t care for Tosca. But after seeing it this summer, I’ve listened to it perhaps 30 times, and love it. Even after coming around to loving it, I hated the opening of Act III. But the more I listen to it, the more I hear the mastery in Puccini’s craft.
Cruz (#89) – I agree with you about Boheme. It has some lovely moments, but overall … so what?