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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2009/10/02/gay_city_news/arts/music/doc4ac633bebae46171263476.txt

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.

(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.)

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…