parterre box

46 comments

• Harry says:

  What some are saying…..the music can be as old as you like but we want the sets to be as mod as possible and accordingly, the direction, also.

  No wonder I prefer most times to renew an opera’s acquaintance via recordings. Guaranteed satisfaction: since I choose the production, cheaper, more convenient, and in the time saved, I can listen probably to another opera as well ,in the same time.

  As for the discussion on good old La Boheme, you have to go a long way to find a more perfect, economically constructed Act in an opera than its Act 3.Plus it has so many of the characters’ feelings ‘left unsaid’, it is even more powerful.

  on October 10, 2009 at 1:56 AM
• jatm2063 says:

  Gosh! I knew a lot of the people on here were OLD, but I didn’t know that many of you were SO VERY OLD.

  Keep the lighting dim, Cieca! It hides all the wrinkles and flabby tummies.

  on October 10, 2009 at 10:54 AM
• m. p. arazza says:

  Actually I think I was born when I first saw this production, with Troyanos, about a year into my operagoing. It’s interesting to be reminded that it was just eight years old then, and probably still being viewed (in a perspective I hadn’t yet acquired) as the “new production.”

  on October 10, 2009 at 11:33 AM
• squirrel says:

  Harry, you touch on an interesting element of experiencing opera. A lot of us started out hearing these works on the radio. It provides the listener with a wonderfully blank set in the mind, which is then fantastically designed and directed by the music we hear.

  If only some of these directors were so tuned into the same channel as us; if only they began by recognizing that the opera is pretty much complete already, because of the richness of the music, and then realized the staging building outward from that, to grow the work in a way that complements and extends the music’s communicative power.

  How many stagings could you say that about?

  on October 10, 2009 at 12:10 PM
• Sanford says:

  Not only are people using possessives when they should be using plurals, but some people are using gross and broad generalizations. COnsidering how many productions go up on the boards every year, many of which are new, I think it would be more accurate to say “some”, rather than “all” or “most”. I read Opera Now cover to cover and they cover many productions from all over the globe including small touring companies in England, small companies in France, not to mention Canada, The US, Astralia, etc, etc, etc. And while some get lambasted, it wouldn’t be all of them or even most of them, it would only be some of them.

  but isn’t it nice to know that someone from this site travels to see all or most of the productions around the world?

  on October 10, 2009 at 12:18 PM
• enzo says:

  35: Not only are people using possessives when they should be using plurals, but some people are using gross and broad generalizations.

  And some people are placing commas in the strangest places. It’s bewildering.

  on October 10, 2009 at 12:35 PM
• Harry says:

  squirrel (34#): You are right. The music and its emotions creates its own shaped architecture. Blessed are those that, when listening to opera at home, can create the ideal settings in their mind. Then we go too many times,and are confronted with ‘visual shit’ being served up in theaters. All we can do to watch, disconnect all the ‘wires’ and track all the code markings – that then made the total mess, when it was put ‘in combination’. When we should be concentrating on the singers, we have these vile distractions. As they say “s..t in/ s…t out”! Some straight drama director perhaps; who you are very familiar with, in the drama field- …goes opera ‘for a change’ Knowing all his personal glad bag of ‘personal known histrionics’ they always pull out ‘their tired individual arsenal’ and you find there it all IS, once again. Doesn’t anyone connect the pieces, what they are doing? All you do, is count up where they used ‘this or that point’ before, as the music sails on to its conclusion. But usually they have ‘A Name’ that they trade upon. What jerks!

  It goes the other way too. I have seen a director of international standing usually into opera and big musical shows do drama. Their Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (original – unrevised version): they changed into 2 Acts and had interval in the middle of the Big Daddy – Brick confrontation! Brick: ‘one assumed- stayed down frozen on the floor after stumbling’ for the length of the intermission The Big Daddy, cast -a pint sized flea of a man, the martial bed so imposing and grand :with enormous ceiling to floor silk drapes (several floors high- that belonged in the Three Musketeers or Madame Du Barry. And yet, you will a claque of morons to applaud such appalling train-wrecks!

  I always smile how close – up T.V style acting movements have become the ‘norm’ on stage,these days. During a confrontational scene between two males: what is the benchmark standard? They start grabbing and scagging each other. Yelling in each others’ face, before one shoves or punches the other to the floor.
  Fine on Film or TV: looks ridiculous from the distance of an auditorium. I nick named it ‘the mutual-male scream fuck’ direction trick. Boring!

  on October 10, 2009 at 1:19 PM
• Harry says:

  jam2063 (comment 32#)’So many old wrinklies’, here!’
  I would like you to know I believe most of us look after ourselves. I had the pleasure one night, in a supermarket: some old ‘female duck’ was at a stand with trial samples, promoting a top brand of moisturizer cream . It was with great wicked delight I said: (Patting my face) “Gee’ I would not need that! Look no wrinkles…,it is THE genes!” Looking at me, and considering my age she verbally acknowledged my point. None! I never did ‘hit the piss’ as they say.

  on October 10, 2009 at 1:51 PM
• lorenzo.venezia says:

  jatm2063 (#32) — the phrase “callow youth” has a basis in objective reality. There are rarely times when age is relevant to intellectual or artistic discourse. In a blind internet exchange of words, I am a rather shocked that you thought this remark was worth the remarking, and weren’t ashamed to make it, and that others let it slip past so easily without commenting. The exchange here is opinions, ideas, and often great humor. Being gay is no excuse for being both callow and rude.

  On point, I had the misfortune of being born and growing up in Los Angeles at a time when opera was another travelling road show that camped out couple months a year at the Shrine Auditorium, which otherwise held circuses. The stage was so vast a second prosecenium had to be dropped in to give it some realistic proportions.

  My first Rosenkavalier, in 1960, was with Schwarzkopf, Topper and Stahlman, with Kurt Bohme as Ochs. I was very young and swooned throughout, unable to believe my eyes or ears. I don’t know that I’d want to see that production now, but then it was dreamy, and, I think, vocally, would still hold up.

  The Met’s production was particularly splendid under Carlos Kleiber, and can certainly be again. But I prefer the one I saw in Paris (Bastille) in the late 90s, and look forward to the Rosenkavalier of my dreams. Isn’t that why we keep going? On the outside chance that someone is going to blow our minds in ways we never dreamed?

  on October 10, 2009 at 4:46 PM
• rommie says:

  squirrel please. one note, i’ve only brought it up on 1 post. 8-|
  if you call that one post, your penchant for “traditionalism” is being one-note.

  CruzSF, I didn’t see that post! LOL. I would have responded of course

  I do love Boheme. It may be very very very very very very subtle concepts, but it makes the audience dream. And that’s what I appreciate most about it.

  on October 11, 2009 at 1:18 AM