Opera Production

[MrGongGong]

But surely the music and the staging/action/scenery (etc.) belong together?

Not always

[aeolium]

[B]
You may personally have loathed it, but I do know that the ENO Bieito production of Masked Ball was loved by audiences. And I know because the performers were clear about the response they received - that is the touchstone, not focus group comments from a vociferous, grumpy minority. And as another poster said, its the angry few with time on their hands who are more likely to respond to "questionnaires" and the like. We live in a negative "blame culture" where the seething minority claim to speak for a majority which is happy with what they get when they go to the opera house. And they are happy because (and this is the point) they get something unexpected and unpredictable.

It's interesting, though, that ENO subsequently suffered from poor box office returns which eventually resulted in the resignation (or perhaps sacking) of ENO's director Nicholas Payne - in that Charlotte Higgins article she says that the controversy "served to keep people away rather than encourage them to come in and make up their own minds (as it might have done in France or Germany)".

You have not taken my point about the deeper "relevance" of droit de seigneur, or the fact that Beaumarchais himself writes about it as an old, outmoded custom which still hung in there - as it still does in our own day and age - in relations between rich, powerful men and poor, pretty women. MrGongGong is quite right: "If music is to avoid being a museum (and there are good and bad museums) it seems highly appropriate to re-contextualise work."

In fact the contextualisation of Figaro began with Beaumarchais (and da Ponte) who set the play in Spain, not the contemporary France which it is obviously "about". So if you're wanting strict historical accuracy you need an Andalusian setting with a medieval peasantry and customs: Spain and France had very different customs in the 1780's, but Beaumarchais was writing about his "here and now". That "here and now" is what we need to replicate, not a Classical, museum idea of rural Iberia.

Yes, it is clearly possible to update the period to any situation between rich men and poor servants, which gives you pretty free rein. But if you do then a fair amount of what is spoken/sung in the libretto and certain scenes may come across as anachronistic or meaningless. And also perhaps that particular tension in the immediate pre-revolutionary society between servants and masters (and in Don Giovanni) may not be captured so effectively. I couldn't really see why McVicar had updated the opera to France of around 1830 - other than that was also a pre-revolutionary time.

I think what I dislike is not period updating per se, but where this results in a distortion of the intentions of the authors (as they appear in libretto and music), or where the director makes laborious attempts to show how relevant the opera is to contemporary society, hammering home comparisons as if the audience were too stupid to make the association for themselves. It really isn't a matter of requiring opera to be preserved in aspic, but of treating the ideas in an opera with the care and attention that is typically given to the music.

please don't think you are speaking for the "majority", or for those of us who prefer theatre (which encompasses opera) to be a contemporary art form with resonance for us and our own time.

I am speaking for no-one but myself, but I am as entitled to my opinion as you to yours. And as for "resonance for us and our own time", any powerful work of the past can have resonance for us and our own time without it requiring amplification for us to hear it.

[Flosshilde]

But surely the music and the staging/action/scenery (etc.) belong together?

Maybe, but that doesn't mean that what we see on the stage has to reproduce the period the composer lived in, or that they originally chose to set the work in, or the period the censors insisted it be set in.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Maybe, but that doesn't mean that what we see on the stage has to reproduce the period the composer lived in, or that they originally chose to set the work in, or the period the censors insisted it be set in.

It doesn't have to, but by the same argument, neither should we be restricted to the instruments as they were at the time of the operas' composition.

[Sir Velo]

And as for "resonance for us and our own time", any powerful work of the past can have resonance for us and our own time without it requiring amplification for us to hear it.

Quite agree. Maybe some here are not capable of making these connections without having them hammered home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. As I said, if you want to put on an opera which deals with contemporary issues, then either commission a new one or present one from the last 50 years. If you want to create the future first you have to understand the past. Call me perverse if you will but I actually enjoy immersing myself in a previous epoch to try to understand the artists' intentions and their preoccupations. Oh, and the productions are a damn sight easier on the eye!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But surely the music and the staging/action/scenery (etc.) belong together?

Why "surely"?

There is always scope for interpretation, but this needs to be done with discretion,

Doesn't this immediately contradict your first sentence - again, I think this whole conversation comes down to our different ideas of "discretion".

and I wonder whether this goes out of the window in some productions.

You're being polite as always, Alpie, but I don't think you do "wonder" this - it is clear from your comments on Chereau and Wieland Wagner that you are very clear in your own mind that this is exactly what has happened. I happen to disagree with you completely in these two examples (and in that of the ON staging of the Ring, which you don't seem to regard as a "staging" at all) - but I'm sure there are others that we would agree on, both pro and contra. The essence - what makes for a "successful" production - for me is what does a production tell me about the work that I didn't know before. I can't imagine that I'd ever be impressed by a production of Die Meistersinger set in the lift at the 1978 Harrod's Christmas sale - but I can imagine that a director with a better imagination than mine might make it work.

[Master Jacques]

Of course you are entitled to your opinions, Aeolium. But pouring cold water on the idea of modern Opera production, with its wonderfully diverse utilisation of the technical and intellectual means open to us in the 21st century, spoils the pleasure which many other people take in this marvellous form of theatre.

Your extrapolation that Nick Payne's departure from ENO was somehow caused by the (highly successful) Bieito Masked Ball is a remarkable piece of chop-logic, merely to serve your contention. That show was one of the artistic highpoints of his tenure, in fact, and excited audiences who were perhaps jaded by the more conventional fodder usually on display for repertory pieces. As for Charlotte Higgins, her condemnation of the British opera audience as somehow more "conservative" than their French or German equivalents is as condescending as it is wrong-headed. German audiences are far more conservative: but their conservatism is about the way the music is performed, not about the stagings, which (like our own audiences) they take in their stride. Poor box office returns (in terms of "bottom counts") are of course solely due to the egregiously high seat prices for opera in London, when compared against Paris or Berlin.

Finally (I won't reply again!) there's no such thing as a theatrical work - opera or play - written without a conceptual context, as I hoped my example of the Beaumarchais Figaro would show. And I agree with an earlier poster, actually, in so far as I've never encountered any of these so-called "conceptual" operatic productions which irritated me to a point at which I was no longer able to marvel at the quality of the musical score.

Surtitles are really a much greater modern evil than these much-slighted "conceptual" productions. When - for example - an audience is laughing at a joke being told in a foreign language before the punch-line has been delivered in real time, we're in serious trouble. Unless of course, one believes that the less one is looking at the stage, and the less one understands what is being talked about, the better!

What price a wordless version of Wotan's Act 2 monologue in Valkyrie, anyone?

[doversoul1]

Originally Posted by Eine Alpensinfonie

But surely the music and the staging/action/scenery (etc.) belong together?

Not always

Who says?

[Master Jacques]

Who says?

Anyone who has seen a successful production which does not merely set out to mimic the original staging (which I take it, means all of us).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And what does "belong together" mean? Yes, I do, too - but everybody has their own "boundaries" marking the difference between what they regard as "original" and what they perceive as "self-indulgent". That's why there'll always be disagreement between us - I think that they passions aroused from different ideas of staging such work is just evidence that the genre is alive and vivid in our culture: it's when none of us could care less one way or the other that we should worry.


And I still think the main problem with Opera lies more with the singers than the Directors.

[aeolium]

But pouring cold water on the idea of modern Opera production, with its wonderfully diverse utilisation of the technical and intellectual means open to us in the 21st century, spoils the pleasure which many other people take in this marvellous form of theatre.

Nonsense - do you think you or anyone else will be put off going to opera by what I write? I am merely expressing my concerns about some of the productions I have seen.

Your extrapolation that Nick Payne's departure from ENO was somehow caused by the (highly successful) Bieito Masked Ball is a remarkable piece of chop-logic, merely to serve your contention. That show was one of the artistic highpoints of his tenure, in fact, and excited audiences who were perhaps jaded by the more conventional fodder usually on display for repertory pieces.

Though as the Higgins piece indicates, there were lower box office returns in that season, and the chairman Martin Smith was reported to be at odds with Payne's approach. It is a fact that the Arts Council had to bail ENO out with a lottery grant to save it from possible bankruptcy.

Finally (I won't reply again!) there's no such thing as a theatrical work - opera or play - written without a conceptual context, as I hoped my example of the Beaumarchais Figaro would show. And I agree with an earlier poster, actually, in so far as I've never encountered any of these so-called "conceptual" operatic productions which irritated me to a point at which I was no longer able to marvel at the quality of the musical score.

I don't disagree that there is such a conceptual context, but I suspect we disagree about its nature. For me it is the whole social, cultural and intellectual context in which the work is written and from which to deracinate it is actually to move the work further away from the ideas of its authors and towards the ideas of its director. I probably also agree that even when I have been fed up with the director's ideas (often) I can still marvel at the music. That is usually what stops me leaving early. But after a while I wonder why not just listen to the music - after all, many operas are broadcast on R3 still, and there are other radio stations.

[MrGongGong]

Who says?

It's a view not a rule
When people start to make rules we get trouble IMV

[gurnemanz]

We have only become heavy opera-goers over about the last ten years (post mortgage, post kids) We now go to ROH about 5-6 times a year. I can't say that my enjoyment has been in any way related to whether the staging has been "traditional" or in some way experimental. I certainly would not wish for opera productions to be based on a closed book of how it is allowed to be staged or frozen in a certain time frame for ever. I sympathise instinctively with those trying something new in order to give a different perspective or insights for our time, even if they fail conspicuously. Wagner was also a director and innovator and my impression of him is that he would have an open mind on staging. We're off to Bayreuth for the first time in a couple of weeks and I gather there may be booing.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It doesn't have to, but by the same argument, neither should we be restricted to the instruments as they were at the time of the operas' composition.

No; it isn't "the same argument" at all - pay attention, Alpie minor!

[David-G]

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?

I was not "irritated" by the ROH Onegin; I was bored, alienated, seething. Did the "dislikes" outnumber the "likes"? I suspect so, given the noticeable lack of enthusiasm in the applause. Will I stay away if the production is remounted? If I was given a free ticket for the best seats in the house, there is no way that I would subject myself to this again. There was no "new perspective" here, just stupidity. Might there be such a thing as a new perspective on Onegin? Perhaps - but it would need a director of greater understanding than Holten to find one.