Opera Production

[aeolium]

I was wondering just what proportion of the opera productions they have attended, or watched on broadcast, people here have been satisfied with. I tend to go to WNO productions and I think of the last 10 I have attended, 2 or at most 3 have been reasonably good and some have been truly dreadful (though the music-making under Lothar Koenigs has been generally excellent). That has also been my general experience with productions I have seen at live cinema broadcasts (such as the recent ROH Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin). It is becoming a real deterrent, especially as WNO performances often turn up on R3.

How is it that the profession of opera directors keeps on getting away with what seems like a consistent level of dissatisfaction among opera audiences without being a source of concern to those running opera companies and trying to get more people to become interested in opera?

[Flosshilde]

Perhaps we've been lucky with SO, or perhaps I'm a bit un-critical, or perhaps I'm jus grateful that SO is doing anything at all, but I've been happy with most of the productions I've seen recently; if I've been unhappy it's mainly because the production was dull.

When you refer to "a consistent level of dissatisfaction among opera audiences" do you have any evidence of that being the case?; and perhaps that level is actually fairly low?

[aeolium]

When you refer to "a consistent level of dissatisfaction among opera audiences" do you have any evidence of that being the case?; and perhaps that level is actually fairly low?

No, other than my own experience of listening to the comments of opera-goers when I have gone and reports of productions where there has been booing of the the director and/or the production. I suppose in many cases people put up with the idiosyncrasies of the production to hear the music and particular singers and are satisfied with the latter. I tend to read the Night at the Opera threads and I would say that the majority of comments about the productions have been disparaging - but perhaps this is a wholly unrepresentative selection of the audience

There are also those here who have said that they no longer go to opera because of the productions.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It might well be the case that the productions that so upset "traditional" opera audiences are the very ones that attract more people to become interested in opera. I say "might", because I have no evidence to support the idea other than that attendence at these productions can't be drasticly lower than those that incline to a more "traditionalist" production (if they did on a consistent basis, the producer(s) wouldn't be invited back as regularly as s/he/they are) - and the possibility that an admirer of the work of a director from the spoken theatre might be attracted to go and see a production of an opera by that director; something they might not fream of doing otherwise. Such audiences frequently have a better sense of what Theatre is - and what it might be - than some traditionalist Opera-goers (many of whom seem never to have heard of Brecht, Piscator, Artaud or Mayakovsky)

I have been lucky, it seems - I haven't attended any opera production in my life that I've regarded as "dreadful", and the worst I've seen (on Video) have all been from the archives, with middle-aged singers supposed to be teenagers, tights packed with what look like walnuts, standing still and singing at the audience with attempts at acting that wouldn't pass an audition at a desperate AmDram company.

I'm more concerned at the lousy quality of so many of the singers than at any eccentricity in the productions: if I detested what I saw so much I could shut my eyes and let the Live sound of the Music provide the scenery in my imagination. The skwarking, barking, out-of-tune shrieking with Tarzan-like vibrato that I hear so often can't so easily be shut out.

[aeolium]

I'm not sure that the great divide between opera-goers (if there is a divide at all) is between "traditionalists" and "modernists". There have been quite a few famous non-traditional productions, such as the Jonathan Miller Rigoletto, or David McVicar's Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne, which have been both very well received and very popular. Isn't it rather the case that it is the gimmicky production, the seemingly pointless interpolations - like the use of the double in the ROH production of Eugene Onegin - that is more irritating to opera-goers than whether a production is traditional or modernist?

And I dispute the idea that a director coming from the world of theatre will necessarily make a good opera director. Those used to relying on the significance of the word alone may not pay such attention to the significance of the music, which is for me at least as great if not greater. The resultant production may set up a constant dislocation between the action on the stage and the sense of the music (as happened with an East German production of La Clemenza di Tito which I saw in the 1980s and in which Titus was cast as a tyrant).

[Flosshilde]

Leaving asside the performance (which I would expect to be superlative ) I want a production to be interesting - to have something to say about the characters & the situation they find themselves in. A period production of La Traviata, for example, would be fine if it gave some insight into the sexual mores of the period & Violetta's predicament & wasn't just a lot of pretty dresses. But if the director felt that, fo a contemporary audience, a more contemporary setting would make that point better, then I would be completely happy with that.

I have seen dreadful productions - a Magic Flute at SO, set on a space ship; a Pelleas & Melisande many years ago at ENO where the set was a pair of staircases that trundled round the stage (it might be significant that the Flute is pretty far down my list of favourite operas, & found P&M extremely boring musically & dramatically - I've tried it since, in a different production, & it wasn't any better).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not sure that the great divide between opera-goers (if there is a divide at all) is between "traditionalists" and "modernists". There have been quite a few famous non-traditional productions, such as the Jonathan Miller Rigoletto, or David McVicar's Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne, which have been both very well received and very popular. Isn't it rather the case that it is the gimmicky production, the seemingly pointless interpolations - like the use of the double in the ROH production of Eugene Onegin - that is more irritating to opera-goers than whether a production is traditional or modernist?

Yes, I agree - the audiences who only want productions as the composer imagined it (I think this is Suffy's position) are possibly as few as those who only want productions that make Peter Sellers' look conservative. But where do the two extremes meet? Who decides what is "gimmicky" and what are "astonishing and original insights into the Opera"? Why isn't setting Rigoletto as a gangster film "gimmicky"? (I don't think it is, by the way.) Which "opera-goers" are "irritated" by the ROH Onegin? Did they outnumber those who thoroughly enjoyed a new perspective on a work they thought they knew well? If productions like these are remounted, do the irritated stay away - and, if so, do audience figures drop?

And I dispute the idea that a director coming from the world of theatre will necessarily make a good opera director. Those used to relying on the significance of the word alone may not pay such attention to the significance of the music, which is for me at least as great if not greater. The resultant production may set up a constant dislocation between the action on the stage and the sense of the music (as happened with an East German production of La Clemenza di Tito which I saw in the 1980s and in which Titus was cast as a tyrant).

An eloquent paragraph, (the Clemenza director was obviously inadequate for the job in this instance) but I'm not sure with whom you "dispute" here. My own comment was how the admirers of a director from the "spoken" Theatre might, for the first time in their lives, go to an Opera that that director has "produced". It may not be a very good production from the point of view that (for example) although it is visually astonishing for Scarpia to torture Cavaradossi by sticking his head down a loo, it makes the singing rather difficult - but, whilst dissuading those more frequent in their opera-going activities, it might still bring in new audiences to the opera (which was the point you raised in your final sentence of #1).

It might be telling or just the haste of posting, but I was surprised to see you referring to "a director from the world of theatre". My point is that Opera is part of "the world of theatre", and (if the Opera is any good) as worthy of as many unusual presentations as anything from the "spoken" Theatre. Some of these will be duff, just by the nature of things - but if the genre will not live without such re-imaginings.

[Belgrove]

I see a good deal of opera and theatre, and much is unexceptional whether it is staged in its historical context or on the planet Zog. Likewise the truly exceptional can have an outlandish interpretation or a more conventional one. The great opera productions are a confluence of many separate elements, and achieving greatness occurs but rarely.

In opera the standard of acting (at least in the type of works I see) has improved greatly since when I first started attending and the quality of the stagecraft is higher because it is linked with technological developments. Musicianship too has improved, so I am broadly happy with the current state of the operatic body politic.

The great and memorable productions make one look at a work with a fresh perspective but also allow the work to say something about the times in which we live. Glyndebourne's Guilio Cesare, mentioned above, was in fact a Marmite production. It premiered at the time of the second Iraq war and impishly commented on this through its Victorian British Empire setting, a meaning and context entirely alien to Handel. The same company's Billy Budd had an18th Century setting but distilled the timeless and universal themes of the work that Britten would have recognised. Being outrageous for its own sake is clearly undesirable and serves no one. Equally, making productions museum pieces sounds a death knell for the form. I'll continue to attend operas, knowing that most productions will be unsatisfactory in some respect, but I would hate to miss that life-enhancing show that can arrive left-of-field but which remains with one forever after.

The 'straight' theatre is going through something of a golden age. I'm looking forward to seeing Medea at the NT which has been lauded despite its stridently untraditional setting.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Some productions set in an era and with costume different from that originally intended do work, but not when the visual experience conflicts with the libretto.
Bayreuth Ring Productions in the 1950s were little more than concert performances and the Chéreau Centenary Ring was attention seeking by the producer that some people liked and others didn't.

Watching The Marriage of Figaro with the characters hiding behind trees that were the size of (and held like) hand-mirrors, was frankly ridiculous - and after we'd paid to go in (as Mrs Ramsbottom said). That was the Opera North production where they used an amplified harpsichord and ee by gum it sounded amplified.

Many ON productions are very fine indeed, but they went through a phase of dressing everyone in the same black coats in productions as different as Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Rachmaninov's Francesca di Rimini. Fortunately, these are the exception and nothing beats a good live opera staging.

DVDs of operas? No really. The viewer is too much at the mercy of the camera crew.


Opera North have done some superb productions, but went through a phase of using the same black coats in productions as different as Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Rachmaninov's Francesca di Rimini. OK, these two were both associated with the underworld, but I recall that they used them for non-Hades stories as well.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Bayreuth Ring Productions in the 1950s were little more than concert performances

Y'know when I said about some opera goers not knowing about Brecht, Piscator, Artaud and Mayakovsky? I should have added Craig (and perhaps Alfred Roller, too).

and the Chéreau Centenary Ring was attention seeking by the producer that some people liked and others didn't.

- ooh, now let me see: I wonder if I can guess which side Alpie came down on ...


I think Belgrove's first paragraph of #8 sums up my own attitude exactly.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

- ooh, now let me see: I wonder if I can guess which side Alpie came down on ...

Actually, my main problem was with the Brunnhilde in the Boulez/Chereau.

[Sir Velo]

Personally, I want to see productions depicting, as closely as possible, the period in which the opera was written. Why? Well, clearly, the work was composed at a particular period in time and as the artists' response to the prevailing social and cultural conditions (e.g. Un Ballo in maschera; Figaro; Fidelio etc). An intelligent audience has the nous to pick up on any resonances with our own age without having it rammed down their throat by an egomaniac director.

Secondly, the 18th and 19th century aristocratic (or even early 20th century world of La Boheme) are far more luscious to look at than our own brutalistically, levelling age. Nothing wrong with a bit of escapism. The 21st century is everywhere you look so let's have a little time to indulge in a less frantic, frankly more seductive aesthetic. Look, if you want to have mafiosi wielding Ak 47s don't pick on Verdi, set (or commission) a work from our own time.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Personally, I want to see productions depicting, as closely as possible, the period in which the opera was written. Why? Well, clearly, the work was composed at a particular period in time and as the artists' response to the prevailing social and cultural conditions (e.g. Un Ballo in maschera; Figaro; Fidelio etc). An intelligent audience has the nous to pick up on any resonances with our own age without having it rammed down their throat by an egomaniac director.

Secondly, the 18th and 19th century aristocratic (or even early 20th century world of La Boheme) are far more luscious to look at than our own brutalistically, levelling age. Nothing wrong with a bit of escapism. The 21st century is everywhere you look so let's have a little time to indulge in a less frantic, frankly more seductive aesthetic. Look, if you want to have mafiosi wielding Ak 47s don't pick on Verdi, set (or commission) a work from our own time.

[aeolium]

Which "opera-goers" are "irritated" by the ROH Onegin?

I was - and not the only one. There were quite a few comments (and links to reviews) about it on this thread when it was on.

Did they outnumber those who thoroughly enjoyed a new perspective on a work they thought they knew well? If productions like these are remounted, do the irritated stay away - and, if so, do audience figures drop?

I've no idea. I actually genuinely would like to know if there is any data about audience reactions. I wish more opera houses would seek them, e.g. with questionnaires or email follow-up. Otherwise it is just a matter of hearsay or the opinions of critics who may not represent the wider view. Perhaps the controversial productions, like the Bieito ENO one with the toilets, put more bums on seats (in more than one sense) and that's why the directors are given licence.

It might be telling or just the haste of posting, but I was surprised to see you referring to "a director from the world of theatre". My point is that Opera is part of "the world of theatre", and (if the Opera is any good) as worthy of as many unusual presentations as anything from the "spoken" Theatre. Some of these will be duff, just by the nature of things - but if the genre will not live without such re-imaginings.

I should have said "spoken theatre" and my point was that some of these directors may have no great musical sensibility and may therefore not be alive to the musical significance as opposed to the purely verbal meaning of libretto and stage action. That was certainly true of the Tito production I mentioned and there have been others where the impression has been given that the director has formed his/her understanding of the opera primarily from a reading of the text - rather like a stage play.

I have some sympathy for Sir Velo's view, at least where the conventions of the period are important to the plot, as in Le Nozze di Figaro. There really doesn't seem much point in updating the period to one where feudal privileges such as droit de seigneur no longer apply (and that was why I couldn't see the point of McVicar's relocating that opera to the France of the 1830s).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Le Nozze di Figaro. There really doesn't seem much point in updating the period to one where feudal privileges such as droit de seigneur no longer apply (and that was why I couldn't see the point of McVicar's relocating that opera to the France of the 1830s).

Yes! A wonderful production, beautifully played, sung and acted - but why set it fifty years after it was written? I couldn't understand that, either. (In the end, I just ended up imagining that there'd been a mix-up with the costume delivery and that somewhere there was a production of La Traviata set in the 1780s.)