Opera Production

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You define the music and drama as being separate.

Connected, yes; but with different priorities that can be brought together in many different and valid ways.

I see it as integral, a "music-drama".

This is clear - but I wasn't attempting to "convert" you, merely to suggest why others might have the different attitudes that "mystified" you in the Post to which I replied.

[gurnemanz]

They don't exist as performance works until performed

I would shorten that: "They don't exist until performed." A composer can obviously have no precise idea what a work may mean to future audiences. It would be negligent of directors not to attempt contemporary interpretations - alongside "traditional" stagings which attempt to reproduce what the composer and librettist might have been familiar with.

I think of Bob Dylan, Pied Piper and shape-shifter, whose songs have accompanied me through my life, along with Schubert, Brahms, Wolf etc. He very much believes that his songs do not exist until they are performed - hence the never-ending tour with well over 2000 shows under his belt and still going strong at 73. He has performed All Along The Watchtower 2188 times. He can't play guitar anymore due to arthritis yet some traditionalists still get upset when they go to a concert and Blowin' in the Wind doesn't sound like the recording he made 51 years ago, aged 20 ..... we move on.

[Giacomo]

That is nonsense.

First you suggest I have a fundamental lack of understanding and now I'm talking nonsense. I don't have continue with you but one more go.

I never said that they were 'equivalent'

No, I said "not equivalent".

- whatever that means (& what does 'musically interchangeable mean?).

It was a loose statement and one without a definitive answer but I'll try, substitute A for B and not have to give it another title or attribution, eg, it's still Verdi's Don Carlos with or without all of Act 1 or the ballet and probably still is with no cimbasso. Massenet's Manon is not Puccini's Manon. Manet's Olympia is not Titian's Venus of Urbino although I think the example is irrelevant to this thread as I'm thinking of the presentation of a given work.

Manet's is an interpretation of Titian's, for a contemporary audience.

Perhaps like Anna Nicole, but it's not La Traviata. My opinion is [other opinions may exist] that updating the setting (but keeping the music and words the same) of La Traviata to that of Anna Nicole is not an enhancement. If I want something about the life and times of Anna Nicole Smith that would be Turnage's Anna Nicole.

To go back to the example of Verdi's La Traviata, which I mentioned earlier. It was based on Dumas' novel La dame aux Camélias; Verdi & Piave chose to give it the title of La Traviata - the Fallen Woman, or The Prostitute; far more direct thatn Dumas' title. They wanted to give it a contemporary setting, but were frustrated by the censor at La Fenice. Verdi considered it "A subject for our own age". Given all this, wouldn't it be more in keeping with the composer's wishes to give it a setting contemporary with us (our own age), emphasising, as Verdi clearly wished, that the problems of women forced (by whatever circumstances) into prostitution are still with us, rather than something that only existed in a past time, related as a pretty historical story?

Verdi had no idea about my age, so no. In my contemporary context Violetta would be taken to hospital and not die. Richard Eyre set it in Verdi's time and I was satisfied. Also worth mentioning, not only do I not hang about in public toilets, prostitutes play no part in my life [other lives may exist] and so the story has no relevance to me and my context. It is in easier for me to believe it in its setting - without me wondering why they don't take an antibiotic or use the telephone.

[Flosshilde]

prostitutes play no part in my life .

What corner of the planet do you live in? If it's one where you can see live opera it must be one where prostitution exists - & in that sense they do 'play a part in your life.

If you expect art to reflect only your specific, individual life, then you will experience very dull art.


[art] is the imitation of life and the mirror of society.

[Don Basilio]

La traviata deals with a specific social form of sexual exploitation (and there is a sort of feminism who would argue it is less exploitative than bourgeois marriage) which I don't suppose exists nowadays when it is socially acceptable to have sexual relationships outside marriage.

A modern equivalent to Violetta would not be a sex worker ("prostitute" is not the pc term) working the streets and massage parlours.

[Giacomo]

What corner of the planet do you live in?

Not yours? I conclude Commonwealth Games closing ceremony failed show a typical night out in Glasgow.

If it's one where you can see live opera it must be one where prostitution exists - & in that sense they do 'play a part in your life.

Walking past someone in the street who is or has used a prostitute does not count as playing a part in my life, certainly not a part big enough on which to base a drama.

If you expect art to reflect only your specific, individual life, then you will experience very dull art.

Emphatically I don't. I'm experiencing *other* people's lives and eras. A drama about my life would indeed be a box office flop.

[art] is the imitation of life and the mirror of society.

Highly arguable and irrelevant.
I don't go to an opera because it is art. I go because I like going.

[Master Jacques]

La traviata deals with a specific social form of sexual exploitation (and there is a sort of feminism who would argue it is less exploitative than bourgeois marriage) which I don't suppose exists nowadays when it is socially acceptable to have sexual relationships outside marriage.

A modern equivalent to Violetta would not be a sex worker ("prostitute" is not the pc term) working the streets and massage parlours.

Hear, hear! You are absolutely right to point out that Violetta is in no sense the equivalent of a contemporary sex worker. She is a respectable society mistress who has had several long-term relationships in which a rich man has called the tune, and at the start of the opera she is not actually firmly attached to anyone - though with a host of would-be proprietors. That's why "society" is so shocked when Alfredo has the bad taste and rudeness to fling money at her, at the climax of the Act 2 Party Scene, as if she was a common whore.

However, the idea that she has no modern equivalent is surely not right. The "Mistress Culture" is as strong the world over as it always was, overtly so in France. Violetta's "sin" is, that in trying to "go straight" in a relationship with a younger man (for whom she is rather scandalously paying the tab) she unintentionally sullies his family's name, and puts Alfredo's sister's marriage into jeopardy.

Unless one understands both sides of the case, there's no tension or point to the duet between her and Germont Pere which lies at the very heart of the drama, and of Verdi's achievement. It's a sentimental view of the opera which sees Violetta as either "in the right", or as a "victim" - just as it would be, to see Father Germont as "in the wrong" or unnecessarily cruel. It is the age-old conflict of romantic passion against social reality.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If I may add an anecdote to this - there is a little irony here, in that the only time I've come into any contact with a prostitute was when I was visiting the opera. (I urge you to read on to preserve my good reputation )

I was visiting Verona for the opera festival in August 1988. During the afternoon before one of the performances, I was passing the time exploring a less interesting part of the city, when a man approached me with a rather dishevelled woman and asked me for 50,000 lira. (I may not have remembered the price correctly). At first, I thought he was begging or possibly threatening, so I played the stupid tourist card and said "non capisco" repeatedly. The man became increasingly agitated and spoke to me in various languages, including English, and I realised what his game was, and kept repeating my answer until he lost patience, waved angrily and moved on.
This was not the way I expected pimps and prostitutes to work in broad daylight.

[doversoul1]

Just for a matter of interest: an un-updated Baroque opera (I expect it has been subtly updated)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AHnll4bxJk

Cadmus et Hermione, opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully

Le Poème Harmonique. Vincent Dumestre (musical direction),
Benjamin Lazar (stage direction) Directed for video by Martin Fraudreau
Recorded at the Paris Opéra Comique

[doversoul1]

Rinaldo at Glyndebourne set in a school

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/12/rinaldo-glyndebourne-review-handel-opera

La Traviata reworked for senators and courtesans

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/13/la-traviata-review-opera-up-close-20s-america

Anyone seen it/them? It is interesting that both are ‘updated’ but one has two stars and the other four. I know these are only The Guardian’s reviewers’ opinions but interesting all the same (to me, that is). I wonder what works and what doesn’t.

[kuligin]

Rinaldo at Glyndebourne set in a school

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/12/rinaldo-glyndebourne-review-handel-opera

La Traviata reworked for senators and courtesans

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/13/la-traviata-review-opera-up-close-20s-america

Anyone seen it/them? It is interesting that both are ‘updated’ but one has two stars and the other four. I know these are only The Guardian’s reviewers’ opinions but interesting all the same (to me, that is). I wonder what works and what doesn’t.

I saw Rinaldo when it was first produced at Glyndebourne.

Rinaldo is one of Handels earliest operas for London. It is a work in which he clearly wanted to make a big impact on an audience not familar with a great deal of Opera, but it lacks the deeper characterisation found in later works.

The problem with the production is that it fixes its attention on one aspect, exciting youthful music about chivalry which is relocated to a St Trinians type establishment and tries to impose that idea on the rest of the opera with lots of incidental gags just in case the audience can not manage to sit through a da capo aria.

Ultimately it was dull distracting and unmusical I would not see it again for free, I am suprised it was revived

[Giacomo]

...The interaction of characters and the words the writer uses to communicate this interaction is what's important: whether Julius Caesar wears a toga or doublet & hose or track suit isn't. The libretto of an opera provides the composer with rhythms and vowels sounds to motivate the Music - that's what important, not where the characters stand, or what they wear. ...

So it would be all the same to you if Julius Caesar always wore a toga?

[doversoul1]

[ed] I have deleted this message, as I think ferneyhoughgeliebte (#136) is right (i.e. my post was off the point).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

So it would be all the same to you if Julius Caesar always wore a toga?

It would possibly become visually predictable, very much "all the same" - but that possibility might actually inspire a creative director to create something wonderful that I cannot imagine. I'd have the same reservations if the hypothetical costume were "always a track suit" or "always doublet & hose" or "always a onesy" or "always nude". The principle matters less to me than what the director and performers do with it - does that give a visual equivalent to the energy and originality of the Music?

[Flosshilde]

So it would be all the same to you if Julius Caesar always wore a toga?

He wouldn't have done in Handel's productions -



In 17th & 18th century depictions of historical event the characters were usually in contemporary dress adapted to give a vague hint of historical costume - as in this painting by Tiepolo of Antony & Cleopatra's banquet -