From Great Performances/Live from the Met telecasts and San Francisco Opera productions, I had become accustomed to great individual performances marred by sloppy, vaguely naturalistic movement, lackluster supporting performers, and distracting background spectacle. Opera production, however grand, simply didn’t live up either to its potential or to the standards of non-operatic theater.

What amazed me about the Peter Sellars Così fan tutte at Pepsico Summerfare when I saw it in 1986 was how disciplined the movement was; not a gesture was out of place. Sellars and his cast had found a way to move operatically that shifted as needed from the passionately naturalistic to the choreographically stylized (drawing on any number of sources), all in service to the music and the libretto. I had never seen an opera production like it. The updating was just an added bonus–we had had updated Cosìs before, and Così, being a parable about human nature, updates relatively well. It was suggestive without being doctrinaire. But it helped create a world within which Così could take place; and really, what more do you need from a stage director? Were I (still) a composer, Sellars would be the stage director I would dream of working with.