ROH 'William Tell'

[french frank]

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.

The reports I quoted for you were 'explicit': they were from the Times and the Economist. It was a gang-rape.

[Flosshilde]

Which you quoted after my post - am I supposed to have precognition of what you are going to post?

[Richard Tarleton]

I think that, speaking generally, it's the criminal collective endeavour aspect that is eluding you flossie - it's a gang rape regardless of how many actually commit the act. An extensive legal literature on this subject.

[Giacomo]

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

Let me get this straight, gang rape is bad but one-on-one rape is good entertainment?

The clap-trap here from an esoteric elite has reminded me what is wrong with "art".

I'll restate what I originally said, that the hoo-ha over the divertissement is a distraction from the fact it was dire throughout.

[Flosshilde]

No, I think that what's eluding me is why people think that a dramatic work - especially opera (or uniquely opera?) - is not open to interpretation but should be fossilised.

[Flosshilde]

Let me get this straight, gang rape is bad but one-on-one rape is good entertainment?

As I said, there's an awful lot of exageration for effect in some of the arguments put forward here.

[french frank]

Which you quoted after my post - am I supposed to have precognition of what you are going to post?

I was querying why you repeated your message at #150, when I had quoted the press reviews at #148. As far as I can see you posted the same comment twice.

And the question isn't about whether a dramatic work should be 'fossilized' but in what ways it is justifiable to "update" it.

[Prommer]

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.

There was a lead officer who led the charge, including with his gun, but no, others 'piled in'. I think we need go no further on this subject unless you want more detail.

[Flosshilde]

I was querying why you repeated your message at #150, when I had quoted the press reviews at #148. As far as I can see you posted the same comment twice.

Sometimes, ff, I do wonder. First, your post didn't say anything about my post appearing twice - if you wanted to query that, why didn'y you say so? Second, I'm sure that you're aware enough of the vagarires of computers & technology to understand that it's more likely that a post would appear twice because of a mal-function rather than because the poster wanted it to. It has happened before, you know.

[french frank]

Sometimes, ff, I do wonder. First, your post didn't say anything about my post appearing twice - if you wanted to query that, why didn'y you say so? Second, I'm sure that you're aware enough of the vagarires of computers & technology to understand that it's more likely that a post would appear twice because of a mal-function rather than because the poster wanted it to. It has happened before, you know.

We'll just drop it. No, I've never known a post to be repeated over an hour after it first appeared on the board; but as Caliban has signalled that the software was not at its best this morning, you can have that point, to avoid further argument

[Flosshilde]

I'm not sure about 'you can have that point' - it sounds as if you don't really believe me*. I switched my computer off & went & had breakfast while it was still, apparently, trying to send.

*Do I really care? No, not really.

[Sir Velo]

[MrGongGong]

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.

I went to a very interesting conference today
We discussed the relationship of sound to place
and the differences between

physically being in a place and hearing sounds
hearing recordings of sounds of a place one has been to
and
hearing recordings of sounds of a place one hasn't been to

Some people seem to have a problem with the various modes of experience

[Giacomo]

No, I think that what's eluding me is why people think that a dramatic work - especially opera (or uniquely opera?) - is not open to interpretation but should be fossilised.

Your use of "fossilised" is emotive. Richard Eyre's La traviata is not a fossilised version of the original. I saw it again last week. No booing heard nor needed.

If one modifies a work radically as was done with Guillueme Tell it becomes another work. I paid to see Guillueme Tell not a grungy play about 1990s Bosnia.

Pappano said "opera has to move on". Has he not realised that opera does moved on. Since 1829 opera has been "moved on" by the works of Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Puccini, Strauss and many others through to modern times including John Ades's The Tempest (2004), Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur (2008) or George Benjamin's Written on Skin (2012). And if you want to "move opera on" again then feel free to create a new work. The result was not to move opera on but an attempt to move Rossini's Guillueme Tell on, a French grand opera with ballet sequences from 1829, by desecration.

As to allowing us (you) to experience new interpretations, it is done by depriving us of seeing the original. Especially for a work staged once every 20+ years this is not what I nor evidently many others want.

It seems you don't realise how irritating I find this whole thing. You are asking me to explain why an opera should follow its libretto. There are tiresome illogical arguments like "opera should challenge", bunkum, go staple-gun your head to a wall if you want to be challenged. Even the iconoclasts keep the music "in a museum" but to say the stage action should follow the libretto has to be justified and defended. Crazy.

[MrGongGong]

If one modifies a work radically as was done with Guillueme Tell it becomes another work. .

Care to expand on that?

Bach on the piano?

How many 'wrong' notes do I have to play for a piece to loose it's identity?

How 'robust' are musical works?

This is a subject much discussed by musicologists (but not in here it would seem)