Opera Production

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think Giacomo may have been suggesting that, if production matters were of lesser importance than the Music, why not always set operas as the composer and his contemporaries imagined them. If so, I hope my previous post addressed this.

[Flosshilde]

& the print I posted, showing Farinelli as Giulio Cesare, demonstrates how Handel would, most likely, have imagined Julius Caesar. 18th century theatrical productions had very little sense of historical accuracy.

[Don Basilio]

... let alone Shakespeare.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

& the print I posted, showing Farinelli as Giulio Cesare, demonstrates how Handel would, most likely, have imagined Julius Caesar. 18th century theatrical productions had very little sense of historical accuracy.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... let alone Shakespeare.

[aeolium]

& the print I posted, showing Farinelli as Giulio Cesare, demonstrates how Handel would, most likely, have imagined Julius Caesar. 18th century theatrical productions had very little sense of historical accuracy.

Yes, but it would be perfectly possible to mount a historically informed "Augustan age" Giulio Cesare in which those historical misconceptions were replicated. If one says that because the C18 composers/librettists had no sense of historical authenticity in the way we do, then it's also true to say that C18 composers had no regard for authenticity in performing the works of their predecessors. Beethoven did not search for a harpsichord to play the works of Bach and Handel to Viennese audiences. Yet our age has come to the belief that we ought to be more conscientious in recreating the actual sounds of those old works on similar instruments.

To a certain extent I can see ferney's argument about the music requiring different treatment from the drama, stories and libretti ranging from implausible to downright absurd (I can't get the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera out of my head when I watch Il Trovatore!). I don't think anyone here is suggesting that productions should be stuck in the past but my concern is that the dramatic action and, above all, representation of character are consonant with and not contrary to the sense of the libretto and the music. It is where there seems to be a great dissonance between what is happening on stage and the text/music that it becomes a tedious experience.

[duncan]

I once asked Jonathan Miller why when authenticity in musical performance is valued so highly these days, nobody is interested in authenticity in opera production. He could not answer me.

You could equally ask why - in my experience - people who favour authentic productions also tend to favour inauthentic musical performance.

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.

Judging by the number of young and exceptionally attractive women in the company of mature, unprepossessing gentlemen one sees at the ROH, I wouldn't be so sure that there are not a few Violettas in the audience. La traviata could easily be set in 21st century London.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Judging by the number of young and exceptionally attractive women in the company of mature, unprepossessing gentlemen one sees at the ROH, I wouldn't be so sure that there are not a few Violettas in the audience. La traviata could easily be set in 21st century London.

It's something I've never been able to understand.

Cosi fan tutti.

[vinteuil]

It's something I've never been able to understand.

.

... what is it that you don't understand? - that "mature unprepossessing gentlemen" might wish to spend time with "exceptionally attractive women"? - or that "exceptionally attractive women" might wish to spend time with "mature unprepossessing gentlemen" - who might just also happen to have substantial assets ??

As Don Basilio reminds us -

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)...

[jean]

Cosi fan tutti.

Is that what you meant?

[gurnemanz]

I suppose "tutti" includes both men and women.

[jean]

This was on French TV a couple of weeks ago - did anyone see it?

I found the production...interesting. From the comments:


Appalling production! Just when you think the sick perversity of modernist directors and stage designers has reached its peak, they surprise you with some dumbfounding crap like this!

I have seen yesterday friday 15 august the spectacel Il Trovatore from Salzburg 2014.
The singing beautiful but...............wich idiot makes this medeaval play in a museum.Why this rediculous costumes as museum-guides.That makes for me this
opera spectacal worthless .Pitty .So wil be Opera murdered.No Salzburg Festival ...for opera lovers a disaster.I would feel robbed if I payed for a seat to see this miserabel spoectacle.Again: singing ,orchestra beautiful but the rest: HORROR

I cant agree with you. I saw it in television and was fascinated, its a very witty idea. And culture needs to grow, develop and refine! Its only a new way to tell the wonderful story. It ruined nothing, in my opinion.

[gurnemanz]

A couple of days ago I watched this year's Don G from Salzburg via Austrian TV on satellite. Also "interesting" ...... set throughout in a cavernous hotel reception. Much to enjoy but some odd moments and generally well sung.

It seems to be still available http://www.medici.tv/#!/don-giovanni...-festival-2014

Review here

[Sir Velo]

Looks like the UK's most successful export currently may well be a line in daft operatic productions, if this Opera Bastille production of Le Roi Arthus is anything to go by. Given the Arthurian legend, one might have been led to expect a neo Burne-Jonesian setpiece; but no, Vick ever the creative innovator, knows better, and sets this medieval chivalric romance in a suburban flatpack construction house with a garish plastic sofa and plastic flowers. How this can be seen as "re-imagining" Chausson for the 21st century is not made clear.