ROH 'William Tell'

[MrGongGong]

It's not just nudity though, is it? It's the graphic and protracted representation of a gang-rape, as I understand it.

That's what SOME people say
Others say something else

Personally
I don't know, as I haven't seen it

BUT
Some people I know who have (and are in it) might say something else

(Good on you Simon B for staying in the wings )

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/guillaume-tells-gangrape-scene-caused-uproar-at-the-royal-opera-house--but-the-portrayal-of-extreme-sex-and-violence-on-stage-is-nothing-new-10365029.html

[vinteuil]

aeolium's comments tie back to what I was saying about classical drama - no violence on stage. People didn't need to see it to experience 'pity and fear' and there were alternative ways of presenting violent acts. Is the message now that human beings have become so evolved (= brutalised?) that they only feel or understand if there's a realistic portrayal?

... so the French classical critics' disparagement of Shakspere was well judged, you think?

[Prommer]

Not everyone sees nudity as such a big deal
If the part was cast with this planned then the idea that someone would choose to audition for it then object is laughable
It's not as if nudity is a new thing in theatre (or even opera)

It is not nudity that is at all shocking but the presentation of the whole scene. I love the way it is seen as mere prudery in certain circles to object to the representation of gang rape, drawn out to the nth degree.

[french frank]

... so the French classical critics' disparagement of Shakspere was well judged, you think?

As I said in my earlier post, French classical drama had the same conventions (hence 'classical'). It isn't the on-stage violence that is admired in Shakespeare, and his drama wouldn't be diminished if there were no simulated murders. How producers presented them at that time, I've no idea.

But that really isn't answering the point that I (and aeolium) made: that it isn't a necessity to introduce the graphically realistic when it isn't even in the original.

I thought Holten's email was rather laughable, pointing out the warning notice on the website: 'The production features a scene involving an adult theme and brief nudity.' That's right - don't mince your words, Kasper. He also says, 'It is, however, always a discussion how much one needs to show on the stage, of course.' But, of course. Especially when it isn't called for by the 'script'.

[MrGongGong]

It is not nudity that is at all shocking but the presentation of the whole scene. I love the way it is seen as mere prudery in certain circles to object to the representation of gang rape, drawn out to the nth degree.

I was more commenting on this bit

though being trailed as 'her choice'

Which IMV implies that somehow the performer who was in the production was somehow coerced into taking her clothes off
If the part that you audition for involves doing this then the choice happens when you decide to audition or not

Some people HAVE objected to the presentation of nudity "full stop"

[teamsaint]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11715578/Rape-at-the-opera.html

some opinion from the house feminist at the telegraph.

[aeolium]

But that really isn't answering the point that I (and aeolium) made: that it isn't a necessity to introduce the graphically realistic when it isn't even in the original.

Yes, though my main point was really something else, that the protracted and deliberate portrayal of violence, pain, torture (for gang-rape is a form of torture and violation) in what still remains an "entertainment" is in itself potentially degrading and corrupting of the audience as well as those involved: the audience can change from being spectators to being unwilling voyeurs of a spectacle of sadistic humiliation, almost akin to watching a violent pornographic scene. The audience cannot remain dispassionate observers - they become almost participants, as the report I quoted suggested. To me the scene where Gloucester loses his eyes in King Lear is almost unwatchable even though it is relatively brief and essential to the drama (and I may be wrong but I think it is the only scene in Shakespeare in which torture or violation is perpetrated on stage; Lavinia's rape and mutilation in Titus Andronicus is off-stage). It is irrelevant that these are mere simulations, that no-one gets hurt: the scenes necessarily involve us emotionally - the singer Catherine Rogers who was so distressed was uncontrollably affected.

[doversoul1]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/wom...the-opera.html

some opinion from the house feminist at the telegraph.

This article says it all. The opera William Tell is now all about rape. What a pity.

[MrGongGong]

Yes, though my main point was really something else, that the protracted and deliberate portrayal of violence, pain, torture (for gang-rape is a form of torture and violation) in what still remains an "entertainment" is in itself potentially degrading and corrupting of the audience as well as those involved: the audience can change from being spectators to being unwilling voyeurs of a spectacle of sadistic humiliation, almost akin to watching a violent pornographic scene. The audience cannot remain dispassionate observers - they become almost participants, as the report I quoted suggested. To me the scene where Gloucester loses his eyes in King Lear is almost unwatchable even though it is relatively brief and essential to the drama (and I may be wrong but I think it is the only scene in Shakespeare in which torture or violation is perpetrated on stage; Lavinia's rape and mutilation in Titus Andronicus is off-stage). It is irrelevant that these are mere simulations, that no-one gets hurt: the scenes necessarily involve us emotionally - the singer Catherine Rogers who was so distressed was uncontrollably affected.

Blimey

'Entertainment' is only one of the purposes of art.

So I guess it's CFM and C Beebies for you then.

This article says it all. The opera William Tell is now all about rape. What a pity.

Except that this article doesn't say that.
It doesn't say it's ALL about rape.

[doversoul1]

Blimey

'Entertainment' is only one of the purposes of art.

So I guess it's CFM and C Beebies for you then.

So I guess that’s entertainment to you. That’s only one kind of entertainment.

Except that this article doesn't say that.
It doesn't say it's ALL about rape

No it doesn’t but it doesn’t take extra intelligence to see why the writer is writing this article.

This is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Most of us do not need to be told or see rape in action in details to know that rape is a horrific act. As aeolium says art is about imagination. Did the director believe that the audience would imagine the heroic act of an individual in the distant past while watching a detailed simulation of rape? I suppose he did.

[Flosshilde]

It is not nudity that is at all shocking but the presentation of the whole scene. I love the way it is seen as mere prudery in certain circles to object to the representation of gang rape, drawn out to the nth degree.

It wasn't gang rape, but rape by one person

I love the way in certain circles exageration is used to make a point.

[aeolium]

So I guess it's CFM and C Beebies for you then.

Ah yes, the Michielotto argument that "we must show things like this, otherwise opera will just be for children". Still, I'd be interested to ask Mr Michielotto about the showing of real footage of rape or torture - for instance the recent footage available to the BBC of a 15-year-old boy being tortured in Syria. If we are all adults, why should this not be shown? It is, after all, the real horror of war, not just its ersatz representation. [I think it is right not to show it, but I would be interested in Michielotto's position].

Incidentally, the director's decision to relocate the setting for this production to 1990s Bosnia during the civil war seems especially obtuse. It is at least unarguable that a principal theme in the opera is the struggle for liberation from oppressive foreign occupation, both in the Tell legend and the story's resonance in Rossini's time, with Italy under Austrian rule (Metternich: "Italy is nothing more than a geographical expression"). Yet the worst of the violence in the Bosnian civil war was ethnic violence between compatriots, Bosnian Serbs vs Bosnian Muslims or Croats, so wholly unsuited to a liberation story. If Michielotto had wanted to find a more modern setting for the story, and one with particular contemporary resonance, he could have done worse than to choose the struggle for liberation by the Greek resistance against the Axis in the early 1940s.

[french frank]

It wasn't gang rape, but rape by one person

I love the way in certain circles exageration is used to make a point.

"A nameless female in Damiano Michieletto’s production of Guillaume Tell is stripped naked and gang raped by soldiers on a banqueting table, and …"

"20 men from the chorus pull forward a woman, taunt her, strip her naked and then pile on to rape her…"

[Prommer]

It wasn't gang rape, but rape by one person

I love the way in certain circles exageration is used to make a point.

Wrong. I was there, and believe myself compos enough to know what I saw. I am not of course arguing that the papers do not exaggerate.

[Flosshilde]

Wrong. I was there, and believe myself compos enough to know what I saw. I am not of course arguing that the papers do not exaggerate.

The reports I read seemed to be saying that it was one officer who was responsible, rather than a gang rape.

It wasn't the papers that I was suggesting exagerate. There seems to be a fair bit of exageration on this thread.