To boldly go where too many regies have gone before
Okay, La Cieca is finally ready to add another hard and fast “don’t” to her Rules for Stage Directors.
To wit: Even if a scene calls for something fantastical, and even if the mezzo doesn’t actually walk out of the production when she first sees the costume… if your imagery immediately and inevitably screams “Star Trek,” well… just don’t!
If you will avoid just this one little thing, O Regisseur, La Cieca promises she will not ask you why the company of Little House on the Prairie is playing host to Richard Tucker in cantorial garb.
Appalling, nowhere near the Patricia Payne class in the role.
the Patricia Payne class
Is that a size of starship?
speaking of regie, i have a question. ESPECIALLY DIRECTED TO SQUIRREL:
in the zeff boheme… mimi is immediately made to look like she’s about to die from her uber pale color (stratas)… how come all the recent mimis at the met have been moving a lot like theyre super happy and super energetic?
rommie, you are the resident Zeffirelli Boheme expert, so I’m sure you are on to something. However I love a conspiracy theory too!
There is an interesting recent article by David Thomson in the WALL STREET JOOURNAL
“something odd is happening to our actors. No one seems to talk about it, but it’s there, and it has to do with our uneasiness over “sincerity.”
This could open a broad discussion of how singers preparing for operatic careers are thrown into situations calling for them to interact with stage directors who do not understand opera or music. It’s all too much for me to think about but there is a problem common to opera and theater that is not often addressed.
Years ago I would have posted something like this first on Opera-L, but thanks to La Cieca and those posting here, Parterre has evolved to be a much more interesting place.
See http://tinyurl.com/yhlyhds
and no cieca, you did not just diss on startrek! *snap*
My first impression was that it’s less Trek than Sendak. “Where the Wild Thing Sings.”
In the Star Wars division:
Kate Aldrich is a much better singer.
Is this the Metroid version of Ballo, or what?
I am all for imaginative stagings of problematic works, but I’ve never been able to figure out, in this one, exactly why Ascanio is a robot.
I love the Salzburg production of Cellini. The scenes on the rooftop with the helicopter, the great trio of Cellini Theresa and Firamosca (hiding in a movable smoke stack like Groucho Marx), the cell phones, the neighbors, etc, plus the use of a really fine edition to made all of it possible is very entertaining. I too do not understand why Kate was made to look like R2D2 and it must have been so difficult for her working in that dreadful costume, but she pulled it off with great aplomb.
and that vibrato… eeek
If Emma Dante is 42 (published age), then I am a real Fakor.
I heard a rumor that a bottomless mezzo dressed as a pine cone is still a bottomless mezzo. Yick.
Our Doyenne winks at us as she affects a split infinitive in the headline.
So very sly is she.
If I close one eye, I could almost see the this scene in a Hayao Miyazaki light. O porcupine witch!
Cieca, this begs the question…
What are your other fast and hard Rules for Stage Directors?
Isn’t she a hedgehog?
It seems that the genius costume designer in this production of Ballo is one Arnaldo Pomodoro – who definitely deserves to have some pomodori thrown at him.
Pomodori putridi?
She’s C3PO, not R2D2!
I haven’t seen the rest of this production, but apparently it is coming out on DVD soon. So far I’ve been able to say that this number must make sense in a context I haven’t seen.
Ulrika als porcupine! Does this indicate that her clients come to her when they’re in sticky situations? Or that she has enough spine to tell people unpleasant truths? Or perhaps that she’ll use a quill to send warning notes?
Good lord, that Ulrica looks like the love child of a porcupine and Jabba the Hut!
Unless it is a Star-Trek-themed production of Don Giovanni where Giovanni is Kirk, Leporello is Spock, Donna Anna is Uhura, Donna Elvira is an Orion Slave Girl, Zerlina is Nurse Chapel, and Giovanni and the Commendatore fight with pon-farr-style Vulcan lirpas at the top of the show, which ultimately ends with Giovanni falling into the Guardian of Forever. In this case, please, by all means, use imagery that immediately and inevitably screams “Star Trek.”
Masetto is Sulu because he’s a bass. Ottavio can be Chekhov. Or a tribble. No one cares about Ottavio.
Ottavio is a wimp but he has the best music.
Wow, what a stimulating article, thanks so much for the link. I loved reading it, but I think his equation of Method = Emotional Truth and acting = lying is pretty facile. If a character’s emotional truth, as so often in Method movies, is a matter of feeling sorry for oneself, I’ll take a little pretending by the likes of Ronald Colman that can still take me to a higher plateau. But thanks again.
Sorry, this comment was meant to follow on Quanto’s entry at #5.
Who is singing as Pine Cone the Hedgehog?
Anna Maria Chiuri.
She might not have a bottom, but she makes for one crazy pine cone.