Ach, schnapp!
Nikolaus Bachler, intendant of the Bayerischen Staatsoper, to Our Own Peter Gelb: “Ich zeige dem Publikum, was sie sehen sollen, und nicht, was sie sehen wollen, schließlich sind Oper und Theater kein Dienstleistungsgewerbe.” [Welt Online]
“…the argument that “[Bieito] does the same thing over and over again,” which is like saying that Vermeer is a fake because all he painted were interior rooms with windows.”
I agree with much of your thinking on Regie stagings, Cieca, but would get off the bus here with this point that I have also seen made by an Intendant defending a witless production by a wannabe ( can;t recall which at present) who ALWAYS uses the same elements in staging opera.
Isn’t there a distinction to be drawn between a creative artist like Vermeer and an interpretive artist like a director who is working with words and music that have already been created? Not that they can’t be *interpreted*, but it should not be treated as a blank canvas on which it is sufficient to project one’s own personal mythology/iconography to achieve something.
I think without going all the way to the “blank canvas” analogy my argument has some limited merit. From one angle, the Vermeer/Bieito parallel is that we are talking about two artists who are perceived to limit themselves to a rather narrow palette of effects, and my point there is that it is possible for an artist to do beautiful and moving work within such constraints.
The second argument in a way contradicts the first, but I see it as a different way of looking at the “similarity” question. The “narrowness” of Vermeer’s subject matter (a couple of rooms in his own home, with a few not-lavish furnishings and a small number of models used repeatedly) is essentially trivial in comparison to the depth of his treatment of light and technical use of pigment, i.e. the qualities that make his art so fascinating and prized today and, most likely, forever.
I think a similar argument can be made about Bieito’s work, in that he does use certain repeated motifs (e.g., self-mutilation, urination, graphic sexually-charged violence) but he treats these elements so differently in different contexts that it’s shallow and wrong to say “all his productions are the same.”
I saw two Bieito productions in the course of a week and they were very different in effect: Entführung was a black comedy very clearly set in a recognizable (though exaggerated) modern milieu; Parsifal was dreamlike and mythic, with the epoch and the location of the action deliberately obscured.
The dramatic choices he made for each of these productions did not in any way feel arbitrary, but rather seemed to spring from a very deep reaction to the music and text. The end of the Mozart opera, for example, was very definite, closed and “hard,” even though it was clearly not the ending Stephanie wrote. The finale of the Wagner, though again it diverged from the published stage directions, was ambiguous and “open,” deliberately so I think: here Bieito wanted each audience member to draw his own conclusions from what was witnessed.
Briefly, then, the “always the same” bits in Bieito are superficial, and I think are about as useless as the 1950s critiques of Maria Callas that she always played herself.
Now, this doesn’t mean that just because a director always seems to put on the same show he’s a valid talent; as I have tried to make clear, the “similarity” aspect is actually pretty neutral as a value judgment. A good director can make good theater from a limited set of images; a lousy director will make lousy theater.
Fair enough.