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.
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.