Old crypto-fascist yells at cloud
“The immitigable force of Italian melodrama and Mediterranean culture, which is loved throughout the world, today is worthy of a different fate and should become a means of new expressions, a national flag to be treasured. Instead, often great efforts are made to reject a culture, to massacre the work and stature of artists who have little more to look forward to. I love opera and seek deeply within to continue living up to the great Italian opera tradition, but today, only lower culture categories are promoted, causing us to miss an opportunity to assert the sheer force of Italian art. No one wants to admit this, but I am the only one to hold the banner high!” (Franco Zeffirelli, interviewed in the program book for this summer’s Arena di Verona for which he has directed and designed the entire season.)
I would take away the “crypto” when speaking about Zeffirelli.
Wow – two fascist Francos. What are the chances?
immitigable : adjective archaic
unable to be made less severe or serious
Upon finishing the interview Signore Zeffirelli was seen boarding a flight to Ethiopia, jacket emblazoned with scudetto patches.
He’s mad or drunk. Why’s that man here? His song alone would sour the beer. His temper’s up. O chuck him out. I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t howl.
Well played, sir, well played! I’d much rather have a beer with Peter than Franco.
Now, I find myself wondering about how he feels about the great Italian traditions presented by his dear friend Berlusconi – what great tradition, for example, might “Sexy Carwash” fall into?
No one wants to admit this, but I am the only one to hold the banner high!
I wonder what, for instance, Pier Luigi Pizzi would have to say on this matter…
It’s a mistranslation. He said “banner” because he didn’t know the English word for “cazzo.”
Oh … maybe I need to apologize to the native Italians here for using a very bad word.
Well… not necessarily, caro Masettino. If, for instance, an Eye-talian wants to say that something is insignificant or without value, they use the c word. “Non vale un cazzo”, for instance, “quello che dice Lo Zeff non vale un cazzo” – “Zeff’s words are worthless”, for example.
Or: che cazzo fa? What the hell is he up to?
So, let’s go to town: if ‘banner’ is replaced by un cazzo (and not il cazzo, as you suggested), it’d be something like: “I am the only one to hold absolutely bloody nothing high!”
So he meant to say: No one wants to admit this, but I am the only one to hold the boner high!
…which indeed comes to the same thing.
Oh, the visuals: a cazzo-proud, butt-naked Zeffo holding her boner high, high aloft in its priapic glory.
If she were a Wagnerian score, would she be cut or uncut?
It’s as if they gave Grandpa Simpson an opera season to stage.
“I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what IS it seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you, too!” — Grandpa Simpson
YES, he does sound like a crazy old coot, but from the picture posted above I would love to see that production. We deride his lack of creativity these days, but it is a rare artist who can continue to grow and change throughout their careers. Most (like all of us) become more of who we are. That being said, Mr. Zeferelli is one of the last proponents of a type of operatic spectacle that is a rarity these days. I wish to the Goddess that he would do a Ring Cycle before he kicks it. He might not have a lot to add to the century of dialogue on Wagner and his art, but it will be one HELL of a production.
Again, I certainly don’t agree with everything he says, but as an elder statesman of opera (who is still making money bitches) he should be given his due.
Bravo, NYCOQ, you’ve got guts.
And please god, let it be at the Novosibirsk Light Opera and Cabaret Society.
VERY well said NYCOQ. I too think Franco is a little lupey but hey he DOES still make money and is able to “run around” with those cute Italian studs (who would not even look at him otherwise) then rush off to Mass praying for forgiveness for his fornication. So I say let the dear old girl continue to do her thing (like piss everyone off)for as long as she can.
From the picture above, you have seen the production: three hours of a giant ornate image, with movement (not to mention character or thought) purely optional.
Here is a look -- backstage and performance (in Italian)
I think Franco ceased to be a director a long time ago. He’s still designs impressive-looking sets so maybe they should hire him to be some other director’s set designer. I bet he’d love that!
More cheap and vulgar window dressing chiches from a tired old hack who hasn’t had a new idea in a couple of decades.
Not to mention the one about patriotism being the last refuge of a certain segment of society.
Exactly. What repels me even more than the mean-spiritedness and ungrateful homophobia is his loud backing of Berlusconi. I mean, Susan Graham got into trouble here just for singing at an event for the Bushes. This guy is a well-publicized supporter of one of the most shameless … uh … I guess I better head out to the verandah if Betsy won’t be bothered by the company.
Yeah, Will, but . . .
Must every idea be new, and is new necessarily better? Zeffirelli coalesced his thinking forty years ago, no question, but his “idea” was powerful and it sold, and it still sells today.
Remember the “New Coke” debacle? Oh yeah, I know, bad analogy, Coke no longer contains cocaine, etc., blah blah, but there are many products on the market that I no longer buy because “new and improved” has replaced the very qualities that made me buy them in the first place. Microsoft “Vista” anyone?
My problem is not so much the productions (about which chacun a son gout, except of course here in New York from about 1980-2000 where basically Italian opera was done by Zeffirelli or as an imitation of his style) but rather his bitter, ungenerous attitude toward other artists. He acts as if his is the only way of doing opera, past, present or future, and that everyone else who attempts the task is necessarily a dolt or a charlatan. How hard is it to say, “Of course other directors might do this opera a different style, but I surely there’s room in the world for many interpretations, including mine?”
Zeffirelli has had a charmed career in the theater and has created on perhaps a half-dozen great productions in the course of almost six decades. The rest, frankly, is coasting, and I think he realizes that: thus the defensive belligerence.
Notice the total lack of quibble from this corner.
While all of what our gracious hostess says is true; he must being doing something right because people are still paying him to do it. He just seems like every opera queen I know including myself – everything I believe is right and everyone else who doesn’t believe what I believe is wrong. It’s a rather pig-headed way of living life, but La Zef gives us of hours of conversation and people you can all vote with your dollars – either go or don’t go see his productions. I haven’t seen the Met Boheme in over a decade, his Tosca was last seen by me with Millo about 6 or 7 seasons ago. Same for his Traviata at the Met. Granted no one will have the option of seeing any of those productions very soon. Once Gelb or the next GM gets the balls to scuttle his Boheme then that will be the last of Zef at the Met. My personal taste artistically are a little more “astringent”, but compared to some of the regie crap out there these days his type of opera is a welcome relief. Sometimes being a beligerent, bitter old hack is all a woman has to hold on to – to paraphrase a Dolores Claiborne inspired quote. God bless him and once he is gone most of the posters here will be bemoaning the passing of an era.
While I agree that the Met’s production style of Italian opera 1980-2000 was rather homogeneous, I would not say that the other directors were imitating FZ’s style, as that implies he founded that style. Rather, I think that FZ was a cog in a long tradition of highly decorative, naturalistic presentation of the Italian repertoire, which until the 1970s was the default way of presenting those operas. One could as easily say that Giancarlo Del Monaco was imitating Visconti or Wallmann as Zeffirelli.
It’s interesting that Volpe’s book mentions how FZ wasn’t the first choice for the 1985 Tosca (it was Faggioni). I would guess that if Ponnelle hadn’t died, he would have directed the Giovanni that went to FZ. As we know, the Carmen and second Traviata were to have been other directors as well.
. . . not to mention sixty storage containers full of Il Trittico yet to be amortized, about which little complaint has been made and which indicate that the style’s peter ain’t entirely out.
I agree.
Zeffirelli had a definable style, one that stressed the sensual over the intellectual, heightened realism over historical or dramatic veracity, large scaled scenic tableaux over detailed, meaningful personregie. And boy, oh boy, did he ever hit the zeitgeist sweetspot.
The problem is that he doesn’t see it that way.
Understand, Zeff is NOT arguing that his vision is better than the vision of other opera directors. He is arguing that his productions are the only true realizations of the composers intent. As if he were some sort of humble “handmaiden” of genious. That’s why he feels free to take such a self-righteous, contemptuous tone in the global media
Genius. Sheeesh!
To be quite truthful, I am dreading the opening of the LePage Ring which gives every indication of being Zeffirelli on a Paddle Wheel.
indeed. plus projections. and probably more acrobats. weh.
[WHAT! Lepage and Lo Zeff will not be in the same sentence! Same paragraph! Same page! Same website!]
The thing that I can’t get past regarding Zeffirelli are those dreadful opera films. He probably didn’t invent them, I’m well aware of that, but he did them with relish. I saw clips from his Otello, a Gia nella notte densa with Fleming and Domingo recently… They’re both lipsyncing and trying to act… As Roger Parker put it, “while he’s singing, she’s searching his chest hair”…
Opera on film should be banned. (Except maybe Ponelle’s Il Barbiere with Berganza. Maybe.)
Wasn’t the Zeffirelli Otello film with Ricciarelli rather than Fleming?
The one that cuts the Willow Song, you mean?
Yer right. See, I half-repressed the memory of it.
I never even got to the (missing) Willow Song. I blew up when I discovered he’d cut “Si, pel ciel.” And this is the guy that blathers about massacring the work…
Don’t look at me. I haven’t been in a movie theatre since I walked out on John Huston’s “The Bible.” NOT ONE MENTION of Malachi.
Hang on a moment! Don’t forget Von Karajan in that Vickers//Freni Otello film AND the released sound recording made cuts too! The EMI sound recording (inspired by Zefferelli’s Otello ‘cut’ film )had no music cuts, was recorded separately to the film soundtrack and balanced differently. Zefferelli needed say ‘close ups in sound balance’ to match similar film close -ups.
I’m still hoping that LePage treats the Ring with the emotional depth he brought to Lipsynch, The River Ota, and Elsinore, rather than the dramatically plodding techno-spectacle of Damnation (though, yes, I blame Berlioz for much of that). Fingers crossed…
I agree – but given Ota and Lipsynch are among the great events of my life I have high hopes. Damnation – I don’t blame Berlioz. The Fura del Baus production at Salzburg got the most rousing reception of any extreme opera production I ever saw. I was one with the crowd. It’s on DVD – take a look. Le Page’s failure was thoroughly bewildering to me.
I’ll never see any pieta image the same way after the last scene of Lipsynch. It undermines a whole way of seeing.
Out of curiosity, if y’all could have chosen a director for the Met Ring, who would you have picked?
Peter Stein
Chereau. Give him a chance to improve on a classic.
Martin Kusej, tee hee.
Le Page.
Baz Luhrmann
‘Frenetic’ Luhrmann………….Jeez???? Want a manic Ring Cycle full of A.D.H.D -like production ideas tarted up and thrown together? As we kindly say of such creatures: ‘a bit of a cultural ding bat rabbit. The type, where people ask, who let that thing off the leach.
or Julie Taymor
Steven Klein
That is to say, the director of:
httpv://www.ladygaga.com/alejandro/video/
He can warm up with a Lohengrin, perhaps.
Stefan Herheim.
Second choice: Michael Haneke
I have only recently discovered Haneke’s films–has he ever directed opera? The White Ribbon and Cache are absolute genius.
Apparently he did a Don Giovanni in Paris some years ago and now Abbado wants to do a Lulu with him in La Scala. All according to Opera Chic: http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/2010/01/abbado-hanekes-lulu-yes-please.html
[Actually, watch The Piano Teacher, the Unknown Code or the Seventh Continent for a more representative Haneke.]
In addition to the Paris Don Giovanni (which is available on DVD), Haneke is scheduled to do Cosi in Madrid in 2012. This is one of the projects that Mortier announced for NYCO during his short tenure there – when Motier departed and subsequently signed with the Teator Real, he took the Haneke / Cosi project with him.
Conisdering Haneke doing Cosi, I think of that subversive little family “romp” Funny Games. The Cosi should be VERY interesting indeed!
LePage