Careless whisper
La Cieca has heard that, not to be outdone by Peter Gelb‘s discovery of hot young directors like Luc Bondy and Patrice Chéreau, NYCO’s George Steel is boldly leaping forward into the 20th century by signing up Peter Sellars for a series of productions.
In other music news, everyone down at Danceteria is just wild for that new girl singer Madonna.
Is this Anna’s Salzburg TRAVIATA yet AGAIN?
If you mean the video, it is Herheim’s Abduction from the Seraglio.
Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final concerts as leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic had a staging by Sellars of Oedipus Rex at Disney Hall. Sellars switched the “action” to Africa for no apparent reason other than it allowed him to put some vaguely African totems on stage. At one point the chorus started doing that stupid hand signals thing he loves –badly out of time with the music I might add– and I groaned loudly. The guy next to me chuckled.
Fine, Sellars’ was my entry in to Mozart via the Harlem Don Giovanni and his Malibu Beach House Pelleas et Melisande (with Salonen conducting) was one of the great nights I’ve ever had at the opera but that’s soooo last millennium.
Plus he’s another one of the numerous dumbass East Coasters that live here and bitch about it the whole time. Leave, no one will miss you now that your patron Salonen is gone.
Malibu beach house? Is that what I saw when the Sellars production was done @ Het Musiektheater, Amsterdam, 1996? That is, did the production travel with him, as it was a kind of Belgian beach house I recall. Remembered quite a wonderful evening – Willard White – Sir White, that is – being very effective and impressive.
Mr. Holland, a couple of threads ago–the ‘stalking’ thread–you related an experience with a member of the L.A. Phil? May I offer you a cup of cheer when I tell you that you are among the fortunate? Don’t ask me how I know, just consider yourself lucky.
Sir Willard?
Are you a calendar-calculating idiot? In terms of production, the number of operatic events that have been ‘wonderful evenings’ have been too few.
Sellars is more than wonderful – he is a wonder. Steel – bring him on – he is for all ages and any time.
Are you a calendar-calculating idiot?
If that’s aimed at me, fuck off and get Sellars dick out of your mouth.
If not, never mind.
Yes, I think the LAO production I saw was done in Amsterdam, we got it here in early 1995.
What was most interesting is that Sir Willard sang Golaud here as well, with the very small Monica Groop as Melisande. In Act IV/2, he bursts in on Arkel and Melisande and gets violent.
At the time the opera was performed, the O.J. Simpson trial was still going on; even if you wanted to, you couldn’t avoid hearing about it, it just engulfed everything here. So, when a large black man starts roughing up a small blonde woman on stage, the crowd at the performance I was at audibly gasped.
Plus, having the Philharmonic in the pit instead of the usual pick-up orchestra was a big plus. I wish Salonen had conducted more at the opera during his time in Los Angeles, I wonder why he didn’t.
As for my stalking object, Camille, I’ll take your word for it.
Sellars is TOTALLY last millenium!
Step into the 21st century!
It’s like my dream! I sing this aria in the shower. I am so not kidding.
I’ve seen a lot of shows less faithful to Mozart.
Visca Catalunya!
True, he looks like a fucking clown, but what he has to say is very enlightened.
Yeah, that’s a very interesting clip. It’s too bad that the Los Angeles Festival he mentions never took hold as an ongoing thing, it’s more ghettoized than ever here. It still doesn’t change my opinion that he’s fallen in to a rut as a director, that he relies far too much on his own cliches now.
I think you’re right, people do run out of “things to say”.
Twenty years ago, Sellars seemed far more original and edgy than he does today. But lots of water has flowed under the bridge and his own work has been copied and other directors have done bolder work. And Sellars seems to just be relying on his old tricks, recycling them.
But I have to say when I saw his Figaro at Suny Purchase back more than twenty years ago, it really seemed thrilling to me. I was swept away by opera. One thing that struck me in that performance that I’ve never seen in any other is that Sellars made Susanna overwelmed and stressed out by all the machinations, particulary the count’s , but also Marcellina’s. Her big moments, the Letter Duet and the Rose aria, were moments of calm for her where she gained her confidence back. It was a very intriging take on the character, not all all the cutesy soubrette bopping around the stage.
With that pineapple hair-cut….what else!
Speaking of Barcelona -- I never really understood the “donnez-moi du lard!” until this new production at the liceu:
For future reference, the barihunk in that clip is David Menéndez, who is very very cute:
http://www.amigosdelaopera.com/imagenes/david_large.jpg
YouTube seems to think that it is Gabriel? Bermúdez…
What I call a gooey gooey face. Yukes!
Face?
Face???
And according to you, the Liceu even got his name wrong. Understandable under the circs, perhaps.
Mr Sellars (apart from looking like a pot scrubber) reminds me of an upmarket “cleaner and tidier” version of Nigel Kennedy. (Now that one really IS strange- chips on the shoulder about “class” and a dozen persecution complexes (not unlike our own Harry).
Love the Kate Hepburn clip too – even if she does look a little like a NYC Tuptim.
About perfect, la Cieca
Ruxton : You have a stranger sense of ‘class’ than I thought. Apparently anyone having strong opinions and ‘who do not sit down to pee’ when making them, have some form of persecution complexes in your book! HA! Any wonder sane people mock these cultural fools. Where shit is lauded to the roof. What else would one expect what is known as the attitudes from the ‘operatic piss chardonnay set’… I.E: The exclamations heard, of “Oh Dear, wasn’t ‘such & such’ JUUUUSSSSSST wonderful, tonight!” as they spill their strawberry daiquiri at some little queens after- supper party! Wanting to forget or not noticing the performance they attended was ‘pure rat-shit’. While they play ‘name dropping games’ of who, they pretend to know ‘that’s important’. I stay sane avoiding such stupid ‘slime charmers’. I do not need their approval to feel accepted either by myself or others. Perhaps you do.
The motor mouth twins are the ubiquitous styled ‘Nike’ Sellers & the equally pretentious ‘Nige’ Kennedy. Both also pushing ‘their full of it’ brand, rather than creating real substance in what they do. ‘Class’….with Kennedy, it was a promotional chosen path for a spiraling downward ‘trog’ look and that of outward professed attitude, as the years went on. Now he is the aging angry ‘punk’ rebel of the violin. Remember all his ‘nice clean cut boy’ photos, some decades ago. His mother being an opera singer, his father a well known cellist. Today, the talent is still there, but the image is a joke.
I have seen some of Sellars work–Marriage of Figaro set in the Trump Tower and Julius Caesar set by a swimming pool–and it was full of gimmicks and laughable choreography. They were complete travesties or what Mozart and Handel intended. His Cosi, set in a diner, would be a good Regi Quiz except that it has become infamous so would be guessed easily. Sellars can be OK in comtemporary works but should leave the classics alone. He is also somewhat passe at this point in his career. Many other opera directors have copied his style and, in the process, trashed many great operas.
I saw his Zauberflöte in Glyndebourne, where he committed the cardinal sin (in my eyes) of taking huge liberties with the surtitles to fit with his konzept. On the other hand, I was able to go because so many people returned their tickets in disgust. Small mercies…
I remember being SCANDALIZED when I went to see ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ at the Dominion in 86 or so. It was the Andrei Serban production which set Act II in near-pitch darkness for some reason. They’d changed the recit after ‘La Mano a me date’ from ‘che bella giornata’ to ‘che bella serata’ and I whispered to my mother that that was WRONG. She, quite rightly, told me to be quiet.
Precocious little brat, I was. No wonder my school bag kept ending up on the science block roof.
I now see you as a Niles Frasier alter ego….
They were complete travesties or what Mozart and Handel intended.
Do say hello to dear Wolfi and Georg next time you see them.
Considering Sellars’s fondness for Handel and his sympathies for historically informed performance, this may be very good news for those of us looking to the NYCO to continue its exploration of Handel.
Sellars is directing Handel’s Hercules for the Chicago Lyric next March with a very fine cast (although some here will no doubt object to the presence of two female singers from the UK as Iole and Dejanira). Attending Sellars’s production of Giulio Cesare at Summerfare at SUNY Purchase during its premiere run in 1985 was one of the great opera-going experiences of my life, and the video of the Glyndebourne Theodora is equally riveting. One hopes that Steel might give him the opportunity to do more Handel, particularly since the NYCO Handel series were wildly uneven in quality.
Should we be looking forward to Vivaldi’s Griselda next summer at Santa Fe? (I actually am!)
La Cieca’s reply to my criticism of Sellars, consisting of him implying that you have to speak directly to a dead composer to know what his intention is, is bogus. All you have to do is read the libretto. Did Mozart set Figaro in the Trump Tower? Does it say in the libretto that Cherubino should molest the Countess? Did the librettist and Handel set Julius Caesar by a swimming pool?
Even if you think that this kind of tampering is OK, Sellars’s direction added nothing to either opera. I am sure most audience members did not leave the theater thinking about how “relevant” Mozart and Handel are but instead, talked about how “funny” it was to have Trump Tower or a swimming pool in an opera! In other words, they talked about the cheap jokes, not about the opera.
“I am sure most audience members did not leave the theater thinking about how “relevant” Mozart and Handel are”
Carlo:
How are you “so sure”..??… did you ask around…??
AND
By (even) talking about the “cheap jokes”…weren’t they then engaging in some conversation concerning what they had seen…the Opera(s) in question??
…just asking….
I found the Trump Tower Figaro (mostly) extremely engaging. I rememebr it vividly after more than twenty years.
I saw all three of Sellar’s stagings of the Mozart/DaPonte operas in a single weekend and it was exhilarating.
Although I’m happy with my own opinions and don’t need them validated by seeing the the majority of the audience agrees with me, in this case I DO remember very enthusiastic audiences; more for the figaro and the Cosi than the Spanish Harlem Don Giovanni (but that was memorable to me most of all by my first experience with the punk Donna Elvira, played vividly by one Lorraine Hunt)
Mozart set Figaro in a fictional setting devised by Beaumarchais to be a recognizable parody of contemporary (circa 1775) France, but renamed “Spain” so as to veil slightly the social criticism of the aristocracy. The “Spain” invented by Beaumarchais and tweaked slightly by da Ponte bears only occasional resemblance to the actual geographical locale known as Spain.
However Figaro is placed in a period is going to be a compromise: Mozart (et. al.) surely meant for the piece to be understood as a contemporary comedy, not something that took place hundreds of years before, happening to folks in fancy dress hoop skirts and powdered wigs. So doing Figaro set at the time of its composition may follow the letter of the “composer’s intention,” but clearly flouts the spirit.
The “Trump Tower” production was one directorial reaction to the piece, rooted in a specific time and place and intended for a specific audience. It did not (as I am sure Sellars would be the first to reassure us) pretend to be a definitive treatment of the drama.
For those of you who have read along so far, here are the stage directions indicating the locales for each of the acts of Figaro:
1. Camera non affatto ammobiliata, una sedia d’appoggio in mezzo
2. Camera ricca con alcova e tre porte
3. Sala ricca con due troni e preparata a festa nuziale
4. Gabinetto [then, later] Folto giardino con due nicchie parallele praticabili
I won’t attempt to comment on your analysis of what the audiences for Sellars’ production must have been thinking, since, unlike you, I can’t read minds.
Why do La Cieca’s responses to my criticisms of Sellars have to be so bitchy (“I can’t read minds”) and personal? Can’t you, as a professional journalist, be more professional in your responses?
So, in your estimation, it is not OK to speculate on a composer’s “intention” but it is OK for a director to do whatever he or she wants with a production because they somewhow have knowledge of the “spirit” of the piece? I think that is bogus.
Do you really have so little regard for audiences that you think they cannot “get” an opera because people are wearing “hoop skirts” and “powdered wigs?” Has no period piece ever had any effect on you? The notion that opera has to be updated to be relevant to modern audiences is the biggest myth going in the opera world, perpetuated by critics and opera company managers who have bought into it.
I only say “I can’t read minds” because you base at least part of your argument on information that could realistically only be gleaned by the reading of minds, e.g., “I am sure most audience members did not leave the theater thinking about how ‘relevant’ Mozart and Handel are…”
Speculation about a composer’s intentions is fair game. What is not fair, I think, is to treat your speculation (informed by your own tastes and prejudices) as indisputable fact.
A further question (asked here before, a number of times) is whether a composer’s (or, more likely, librettist’s) stated “intentions” should be treated as inviolable Sinai tablets. My opinion is that these stated preferences (and other preferences that may be reasonably inferred) should be studied and taken seriously when one is deciding upon an approach to a specific new production. However, these are not the only elements that should inform the director’s decisions. The whole point of performing any sort of recreative art is that it’s not just a slavish imitation of the way someone else did it, or, for that matter, a slavish imitation of what someone imagines (again, through the filter of his own tastes and prejudices) “Mozart would have wanted.”
Finally, perhaps the feature of recreative art most salient to this discussion is that no recreation is singular; in other words, Sellars’ take on Figaro is only one of a myriad of possible ways of presenting the opera. That Sellars chooses to set his vision of the work in modern dress does not destroy all the hoop skirts and powdered wigs in the world; neither does it erase from memory the long performance history of Figaro nor does it preclude other readings of the work.
Or, to put it another way: there have been perhaps two dozen performances of the Sellars production of Figaro as opposed to many thousands of performances done in hoops and wigs. So how, then, does so tiny a minority of the performance history taint the entire number?
In the Sellars production of Nozze the master-servant distinction was much more obvious because Figaro and Susanna were dressed as servants would be dressed today. The distinction isn’t so striking when all the characters are wearing pretty costumes of the 18th century.
One of the main plot points in Figaro is that the master is permitted to have sex with the servant girl before she marries another man. How can that custom be plausible in the Trump Tower version? The simple answer is it cannot. It is just one example of why the Sellars production does not work.
Although Sellars’s productions may be few in number, they are probably often seen by people who may be seeing Figaro for the first and last time. What are they to make of it?
For those of us who have seen Figaro many times and know better, it may be a little less of a distortion but it certainly is a waste of our time and money.
When I see these kinds of productions I rarely come out of the theater thinking how provocative or modern or “relevant” they are. I usually come out thinking about how perverse they are, how they add nothing to the work, and how egotistical and misguided the director is.
We live in the Age of the Director and, like the past Age of the Singer and Age of the Conductor, the balance of power distorts the art form. I hope that more and more audiences have the courage to boo these kinds of directors so that opera managements wake up and respects the art form.
The bible didn’t set Christ’s last supper in a Renaissance room.
Da Vinci did. Artists are forever ‘tampering.’ We’re the better for it.
I prefer this take on trendy condo living to Sellars:
Jack:
Your example strikes me as entirely inapt: Mozart and Da Ponte wrote Nozze to be performed as an opera. If someone decided to do a MOVIE based on the work, then I think your analogy might be more apt.