ROH 'William Tell'

[Stanfordian]

Anyone else you want to put in the stocks?



I would go and make up your own mind (i'm going to see Mozart in a park in Lincolnshire or I would go)

Hello MrGongGong,

Yes I think that I probably will go to Tell at the Odeon. Usually when I go to an opera it's as a reporter so I quite relish opera at the cinema when I can just sit back and relax.

[Barbirollians]

Sounds like the radio broadcast on 14 July is the best bet !

[Giacomo]

The ROH has recent 'form' where rape is concerned.

I recall a rape during the overture of Les Vepres Siciliennes a couple of years back. As it was a strictly one-on-one affair, it didn't elicit much comment.

I complained to the ROH, there was a victim of a rape attack that also complained, there must have been others and no notice was taken. But really, no one needs to be told it was tasteless and unnecessary.

The libretto does not make it clear if Henri's mother was raped or seduced in a brief affair. It happened 18 years before and most importantly either way we do not need to see the conception on stage just because the conception must have take place. Guy de Monfort must have felt the need to defecate at some time during those 18 years so should the prologue also included him taking a shit on stage.

[Giacomo]

Why not make up your own mind?

Too late after buying a ticket and wasting an evening to scar the memory of good music. Sophisticated society is built on exchange, reuse and trust of knowledge. Yes, make up your own mind and listening to others will help you in advance. If you like dull, muddled, tasteless crap accompanied by Rossini you might like it.

[MrGongGong]

If you like dull, muddled, tasteless crap accompanied by Rossini you might like it.

That's what some people are saying
Others (including the conductor) say something else

I would listen to people who HAVE been (and some who have are critical) but much of the 'noise' seems to be coming from folks who haven't seen it.

So this probably IS a case where trusting your own judgement would be best IMV

BUT

In one way I regret not going to see Kanye West at Glastonbury, not because I think it would have been 'good' but because the experience of such a massively misjudged performance would have been interesting to experience 1st hand.

[Giacomo]

That's what some people are saying

The customers.

Others (including the conductor) say something else

The employee.

I would listen to people who HAVE been

Oh please listen, I HAVE BEEN.

but much of the 'noise' seems to be coming from folks who haven't seen it.

Yes, you, please stop posting in this thread until you can add something.

[MrGongGong]

The employee.

There are lots of people who HAVE also been who say something different to you.

[richardfinegold]

Well, if it was the goal of the Producers to get the Production noticed and create a buzz, I would say they have suceeded.
Didn't a past production of G.T. once employ a real apple and archery set?

[french frank]

and, as has been said in various articles, there is a reference to rape in the libretto.

I couldn't find it - is it Act 3, sc. 2? 'Des soldats contraignent des femmes suisses à danser avec eux. Les habitants témoignent par leurs gestes leur indignation de cette violence.'

There is a reference to 'pleasing them' but I can't see that any violence is mentioned other than the soldiers making the women dance with them at the festivities. I suppose a director is permitted to interpret this symbolically but I'm not sure that that means the libretto itself justifies it.

For the record the French libretto is here and the English here. If I have missed something, let me know: I was reading it rather hastily.

So this probably IS a case where trusting your own judgement would be best IMV

Or your own taste?

[LHC]

I couldn't find it - is it Act 3, sc. 2? 'Des soldats contraignent des femmes suisses à danser avec eux. Les habitants témoignent par leurs gestes leur indignation de cette violence.'

There is a reference to 'pleasing them' but I can't see that any violence is mentioned other than the soldiers making the women dance with them at the festivities. I suppose a director is permitted to interpret this symbolically but I'm not sure that that means the libretto itself justifies it.

For the record the French libretto is here and the English here. If I have missed something, let me know: I was reading it rather hastily.

Or your own taste?

I think this may be the reference from Act 1:

LEUTHOLD
My duty. Out of all my family
Heaven left me only one child, only one daughter;
an impious supporter of the Governor,
a soldier, carried her off - she my last remaining
blessing!
Hedwige, I am a father, and I knew how to defend
her.
My axe was not slow to find his forehead;
Do you see this blood? It is his.

[french frank]

It might be that LHC, in which case it very well illustrates the 'classical' theatre convention, French as well as Greek: that you don't show violence on the stage. You can report it and describe it. But it doesn't occur on stage. To me, the dramatic advantage of that is that the drama can be clearly focused. What seems 'wrong' about this Guillaume Tell production is that the opera isn't about the savagery/violence of war. It's a tale of romance and heroism - which gets lost in all the hoohah about on-stage rape. (You don't have to have seen the production to realise that!)

If Kasper Holten and the ROH want an opera about the horrors of war, why not commission one from a contemporary composer? Why not? Because it wouldn't get the audiences that Rossini and 'conventional opera' get, would it? So the tale of William Tell is 'violently' hijacked to serve the purpose of an artistic director(?) who is amazed that a full frontal rape scene meets with the disapproval of a section of the audience.

I think this may be the reference from Act 1:

LEUTHOLD
My duty. Out of all my family
Heaven left me only one child, only one daughter;
an impious supporter of the Governor,
a soldier, carried her off - she my last remaining
blessing!
Hedwige, I am a father, and I knew how to defend
her.
My axe was not slow to find his forehead;
Do you see this blood? It is his.

[underthecountertenor]

ROH has just sent out a long email to those who bought tickets warning of the scene but justifying it as part of the setting - "However, we are aware that some audience members might not want to be exposed to
a depiction of sexual violence in this way, and so we are writing to you to make
sure you feel properly warned about this short scene in act 3 in advance of
watching the production."

Oh! I haven't received an email. The ROH must have worked out by now that I am utterly unshockable. Good.

[underthecountertenor]

(And I'm greatly looking forward to it, the more so having seen the criticisms, both here and elsewhere, and noted from whom they have emanated. Richard Morrison for a start - the extract from the review that I've seen on Lebrecht's site contains a imbecility that is breathtaking even by his exalted standards)

[Roehre]

It might be that LHC, in which case it very well illustrates the 'classical' theatre convention, French as well as Greek: that you don't show violence on the stage. You can report it and describe it. But it doesn't occur on stage. To me, the dramatic advantage of that is that the drama can be clearly focused. What seems 'wrong' about this Guillaume Tell production is that the opera isn't about the savagery/violence of war. It's a tale of romance and heroism - which gets lost in all the hoohah about on-stage rape. (You don't have to have seen the production to realise that!)

If Kasper Holten and the ROH want an opera about the horrors of war, why not commission one from a contemporary composer? Why not? Because it wouldn't get the audiences that Rossini and 'conventional opera' get, would it? So the tale of William Tell is 'violently' hijacked to serve the purpose of an artistic director(?) who is amazed that a full frontal rape scene meets with the disapproval of a section of the audience.

Or direct Zimmermann's Die Soldaten or Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Simplicius simplicissimus ?
Those I would love to see in a Holten staging.

[Flosshilde]

I suppose it depends on what your view of the director's job is. Are they there just to make sure people know when to come on stage and say/sing their lines & then go off? Or are they there to ensure that the production has a sense of theatricality and drama that will allow or encourage its audience to understand why the events portrayed are happening and what their meaning is?