I’m sure La Cieca means another good, smart writer. Surely she wouldn’t exclude her own assistant, dresser, and all-around dogsbody JJ, who has a little gig going at another NYC paper.

I agree with your sentiment, La Cieca, about Zack being a “good, smart writer who is interested in opera”. That is something to celebrate considering what we usually get.

I have to say, though, that I expected a little better of the ensuing discussion than incessant hair-splitting about genre. We finally get a good, smart writer who is interested in opera, and how do we respond? “You can hardly call that a review, I mean really!”

One of the reasons the Met originally gave for nixing supertitles was that they would not be viewable from various locations in the large house.

http://theclassicalreview.com/2010/03/mets-brilliant-production-of-the-nose-is-nothing-to-sneeze-at/

Your questioning of my figure is well warranted, and I stand corrected. The libretto runs a bit over 1400 words (again, not counting repeats). Two percent would run to only 28 words! Still, when I attended the performance, I had been studying the libretto rather carefully, and I was very conscious of the limited relationship between the projections and the libretto I originally described. Maybe a more realistic estimate would have landed in the 10 to 20 percent range. I will stick to my original conclusion that the production didn’t use titles.

Again, I’m not faulting it for that; I just missed them. I agree with you entirely that the opera isn’t written to be understood in the conventional manner.

I won’t get the chance to attend The Nose, so I can’t comment in it, but I really liked the way the titles were projected in FTHOTD. My experience of that work would suffer greatly without being about to follow the text, and I really liked being able to keep my attention focused on the stage and the singers without having to keep shifting my focus back to “reality” in order to read them. That was just one of many of the things that added up to what for me was a truly extraordinary experience.

The projected text in Satyagraha seems to me to be a special case anyway since the opera isn’t written to be understood in the way that Otello or Die Frau ohne Schatten were. I do think the Met made the right decision making the titles in The Nose available both on seatback and as part of the spectacle, and I think the idea is very worthy of further experimentation. (I could see some adaptation of the concept in the Ring for example.)

The text projected in that production represented only a small fraction (I’d say, less than 2%) of the libretto — of the text as written, not counting the repeats. Further, in several instances the projected text was more of a loose paraphrasing of the libretto, rather than a translation, even allowing for the great variation one finds in translations for the Bhagavad Gita. Finally, the timing of the projections generally bore little relation to the location of that text in the libretto.

I’d say that the production made use of the text projection solely for dramatic effect, rather than to convey any substantive information about what was being sung. Note that I don’t find fault what that. I found the dramatic effect appropriate and generally supportive, and not at odds with the sung text, although at times it seemed a bit “pat”, usually drawing on only generally familiar or readily assimilated ideas.

I think it’s best to think of that production as having not used titles. If one accepts the premise (and noone’s under any obligation to do so) that making titles available, presumably in translation, is a Good Thing, then what does one make of the decision to not do so?

If one’s familiarity with the libretto is limited to the text itself, such as by following it in the booklet that accompanies a recording, then one will observe that the actual text being sung bears only a tenuous relationship, if any at all, to the action depicted, and if that’s the limit of one’s interest I’d say that there’s no great loss of comprehension if one isn’t following the text while it’s being sung.

De Jong and Glass didn’t make it easy for us. It turns out that if one maps the text (pretty much stanza by stanza) against where it occurs in the Bhagavad Gita there is something of a relationship between the structure of the story about Arjuna’s dilemma and the understanding at which he eventually arrives, and that of Gandhi’s spritual development, or eduction, during his South Africa years. Personally, I missed having the titles; I would have liked to have been able to use them occasionally as mileposts, to help me keep track of where I was.

As for Mr. Woolfe’s assessment of this as “the greatest Met production of the last decade,” I think that’s pretty strong language, but I can say that I was and still am grateful to have been able to attend a performance of it. I think it likely that it will not be surpassed as a production of Satyagraha for quite some time.

I think some of this also comes down to taste in production style. The Chereau is very serious indeed, and the Kentridge is more openly entertaining. Obviously some of this difference in quality derives from the material, but I think if you imagine what a Chereau Nose might look like (and compare that to a hypothetical Kentridge House of the Dead), you can see the differing intentions of the directors.

I’m overjoyed to have both these productions at the Met, and to have them in the same season is like a dream come true. This is why La Cieca remains pro-Gelb despite the minor and major hiccups of this season (casting, e.g.).

Still, I’d also like to chime in with my surprise at the (unintended?) back of the hand to Chereau and HOTD.