“L’etoile fait tout”
“Maybe this bold staging was a little overwrought. But when you have Ms. Garanca as Carmen, why not?” Anthony Tommasini offers an object lesson in the art of Criticism as Starfucking.
Okay. Here’s “why not.” The idea of turning Carmen’s dance into a lap dance basically strips a whole layer of meaning and irony from the scene. Even working from the recitative text, we have this:
José arrives and tells Carmen he loves her. She tells him that she has just danced for his officers. (She is trying to make him say he’s jealous.) Once he says, “Yes, I’m jealous,” she responds by pretending to believe it’s the dancing is the specific reason for the jealousy. “Very well,” she says, “I’ll put on a little dancing show for you, just as I did for them.” She even says in a mock-grandiose style “Je vais danser en votre honneur.”
The point is, the dance is a ironic game Carmen is playing with José: she’s taking his words literally and acting on them, a sort of pun. Now, a director could choose that he gets into the little comedy and plays along, e.g., pretending to be a serious audience member. Or he might be flustered, not knowing how to read what she’s doing.
But what seems to La Cieca to be out of bounds is simply to abandon the idea, so plainly expressed in the text (and, it can be argued, in the formality of the music) that Carmen is doing a deliberate performance here. In fact, what could be more revolting than the idea that she should say, “Now I will show you exactly how I danced for those other men,” and then commence to dry-humping José’s leg?
Ironic humor is part of Carmen’s appeal; so why should you just chuck all that out because you have Ms. Garanca available (and, so far as we can tell, unable to learn how to play castanets)?
Alagna’s Don Jose is a nice boy who goes astray because that interpretation suits him and his stage persona. Having him be a sociopath from the beginning would have been as wrong, it would have made him look like a poseur. I think one of the strengths of Eyre’s production is that it allows leeway for a lot of different interpretations. When Jonas Kaufmann shows up I’m sure his interpretation will be darker and more sinister, and the production will hold up just fine with the different interpretation.
I’m interested in where and how in the score does Bizet “clearly [indicate] that the castanets, Carmen’s singing and the offstage trumpets are all diegetic [sic] elements.” Evidence would be useful for you analysis to be convincing. Certainly the style of theatre prevalent when Bizet created the score would suggest so, but where are these clear indications? In stage directions? Is there not a formal disticntion between a stage direction and “dialogue”?
Second, you co-opt the term “diegetic” from film studies and this belies a very interesting take about your conception of opera or musical theatre as cinematic rather than as theatrical. Musical theatre and opera’s co-optation of this terminology mirrors film studies co-optation of narrative theory. The use of the terminology treats both film and musical theatre as narrative rather than performance.
In the crux under consideration, the performed moment in this prodution, let me propose it’s narrative equivalent: “… as if she were playing castanets.”
But your analysis here relies on a telling assumption: “Particularly with so familiar a work …” Familiar to whom? Are you suggesting that a director must direct a work so as to assume that the audience has already seen it, indeed is already familiar with it. No wonder you keep pleading for more irony. On the one hand La Cieca mocks regie-direction and on the other pleads for “a novel approach.” Which is it?
So let me get this “straight” — Here you’re arguing that DJ’s character/objective is open to interpretation by Eyre/Alagna because of the audience’s lack of familiarity with the opera’s sources, and above you are arguing that Eyre/Garanca’s interpretation for Carmen’s character/objective is “lame” or “banal” because of the audience’s familiarity with the opera. Why is there interpretive latitude in the first instance and not in the second? Why on the one hand are you constantly seeking after truth in the score/text (dialogue or stage direction) and on the other in the supposed irony of the situation, which you seem to argue is based on the audience’s supposed familiarity with the work rather than anything contained within the work itself.
At the same time, you have difficulty understanding the shift from a mimetic beating on a pan to an extra-diegetic musical sign that evokes castanets that Carmen isn’t actually playing because she couldn’t find them. You haven’t yet commented on the “fact” that the physical castanets aren’t in the scene … in which case, how can they be mimetic (diegetic, following your terminology)?
There’s quite a slip between “[lack of] familiarity with the opera’s sources” and “familiarity with the opera”, among other things.
Well, no. I am arguing that the source material is not the text. The authors of the text (that is, the librettist and the composer) chose what elements to take from the source material and rejected others. So the material that was not brought over into the text is essentially irrelevant.
The breadth of interpretation has nothing to do with ignorance of the source materials, but rather their lack of relevance. The basis of any kind of interpretation, I continue to believe, is the text. Even when that text is treated freely or openly contradicted, the interpretation should be an informed reaction to the text.
The familiarity I am talking about is not so much of the work itself but rather the repeated experiencing of the work within a narrow range of interpretation, and worse, that these “interpretations” are not direct responses to the text but rather copies of (copies of copies of…) some other director or performer’s response. For example, we have all seen many times over the bit where Carmen, freed from her bondage in Act 1, twirls the rope about in time to the music as she sings the reprise of the Seguidilla. At one time this was a fresh response to the text. Now it’s a cliche practically devoid of meaning.
It’s imaginable that even such a hoary piece of staging could be jolted back to life by a performer with a strong, distinctive personality and a certain physical dexterity. Or a meticulous director might work out some subtly timed variation on the old rope dance, a sort response to the existing “expected” business. But I didn’t find that Garanca and Eyre managed any sort of subtle variation and they did little innovation in the way of new responses to the text: in other words, Garanca’s performance amounted to a collage of bits of other singers’ Carmens rather than (as I would have wanted to see) a fresh response to the text.
The bit about Carmen’s not finding the castanets might be relevant if this production indicated in any way that she looked for them. She didn’t. And I begin to get the feeling you didn’t see the Eyre production of Carmen and so any further back and forth about issues specific to this production doesn’t seem to have much point.
“And this is today’s thought: the difference between a play and and opera is always the music. Music dramatizes (it doesn’t merely accompany or mood set) which is what makes opera, opera. Music articulates and deepens character and can contradict the words and change the intent of what a character is saying when s/he is singing it. To be indifferent to that or unaware of it or dismissive of it is to hate opera. And many people do, finding the music annoying and wishing to make it irrelevant. But here one thinks, the feeling is for the primacy of the music (and the evil nature of those who are not overwhelmed by poor Madame Tebaldi).”
First, this smacks of an “America, love it or leave it” kind of thing, reminiscent of the Bush years. “HERE, one thinks, is for the primacy of the music.” Bullshit! There are many ways to view the arts.
Your definition is incorrect, though buttressed by centuries of cultural and aesthetic politics. Opera is an historical and cultural _style_ of theatre, like Kabuki … it is not it’s own art form. It has no constituent properties that distinguish it from ‘theatre’; it just uses the media of theatre by different means. Certainly it has effects that cannot be achieved without the predominance of music, though “contradicting the words” is not one of them; I can contradict words onstage without the use of scored music through the complexity of paralinguisitic signs or a host of other semiotic devices. Truly, the only thing that opera is especially good at, relative to other theatrical styles (but not excluding their ability) is the mimetic depiction of simultaneity, as in duets, trios, and choruses and the like. On the other hand, the amount of acculturation necessary to appreciate the style (like Kabuki) make it a rather effete and undemocratic activity at present. This, combined with the fact that there are so few new operas, even further suggests that it is a a style of theatre rather than an aesthetic form (such as painting, sculpture, music, theatre, or cuisine).
My assumptions, however, do not make me a “hater” of opera … love or leave it.
(1) Of course the source material is not the text. That’s hardly to be argued. But subtext can be based on source material and inform interpretation; all characters have an “inner life” developed from their past experience. All the while the audience need know nothing about the source material. But we agree about this. What we don’t agree about is your reliance on the converse argument, that the audience HAS TO KNOW the opera (either in its score or through repeated performances) and a director must direct irony that doesn’t exist. You are suggesting that a new production must take into account the history of its previous productions (though not the source material) in order to generate significant meaning. I find that both elitist and blatantly false.
(2) It is certainly not devoid of meaning for most of the audience who have not seen the opera before … Gelb’s audience, I might add, or the audience that he seeks to develop.
(3) “Garanca’s performance amounted to a collage of bits of other singers’ Carmens rather than (as I would have wanted to see) a fresh response to the text.” I find this assertion unprovable and silly. Using this standard, you can nullify any performance by saying, “Well, you know she was standing at this moment and that’s where XXX stood …” You can’t dissect a performance into as may little pieces that suit your level of vitriol about the things you hate.
No, of course I haven’t seen the production, which is why I rely on your criticism here being better informed and better written. That’s what criticism is for. If I had seen it, I would probably not need to care what you think.
Actually I find this very interesting in the general sense. I never said the audience HAS TO KNOW the opera. My point is that a large portion of the audience at a major opera house and for a standard opera is going to be people who do in fact know the opera through repeated exposure to it. As such, it is laid upon the director and performers to make the opera interesting and fresh for this large portion of the audience. This point is just as true for the re-creators of a Broadway musical revival or a production of a familiar classic drama.
This same realization of the work needs to be meaningful and attractive to newcomers to the piece as well. That’s a tall order. But if the direction and the performances are fresh responses to the text, that can go a long way toward satisfying both the veterans and the newbies.
Or, to exemplify. The rose in the teeth is a camp cliche and therefore lacking in meaning to the the audience who have seen Carmen repeatedly. This gesture may or may not have meaning for a naive audience. So I think it’s a director’s job to find something different to express whatever was meant to be expressed by “rose in the teeth” that communicates to both audiences.
What proportion of the actual audience do you think has seen the opera before (and how many with such frequency so as to know the sources, the stage directions, the six previous productions at the MET, and Ruth Berghaus’s middle name)? And where is your evidence for this? I am sorry, really, I just can’t bear the assumptions without evidence.
I understand your position, certainly a valid one (about multiple audiences), but I submit that you need to adjust your criticism for this duality (multiplicity?). And you need to specify the composition of the audience. You can’t just analyze for _your_ audience and not the majoritarian audience. [I note that you carefully use the the phrase 'large portion' rather than majority or even economic majority.]
This is Gelb’s problem: nurturing audiences that are being introduced to the repertory, not we queens seeing our Nth CARMEN. [I'm waiting for Kaufmann.] Sorry, we eventually all need to be replaced by newcomers who might actually enjoy the “rose in the teeth”. From an institutional perspective, the job of the director is to please the audience and have them pay money to see what’s on offer. Are these CARMEN’s not selling? Where’s that HERNANI-like riot?
For so many on here, it frequently sounds like you are so bored to death with opera in performance. In this instance, I detect a reverse nostalgia … you want something different but also something that is just as good as the first time. Sounds like too many of the men I have dated.
If you’re interested in continuing the discussion we can take it off line.