Traditional opera or Regietheater?

[Fafner]

I was watching the latest MET production of Don Giovanni (a conservative one, yet intelligently done) and I was surprised to read that it received much scorn from the New York critical press.

Here is a great article about the critics' desire for directorial extravaganza: Traditional Opera and Its Enemies

As an opera lover, I hate Regietheater, almost as much as I hate the recent trend to produce movie versions of known musicals, with major Hollywood stars who cannot sing.
Actually, no. I hate Regietheater more. 

[Cato]

I was watching the latest MET production of Don Giovanni (a conservative one, yet intelligently done) and I was surprised to read that it received much scorn from the New York critical press.

Here is a great article about the critics' desire for directorial extragavanza: Traditional Opera and Its Enemies

As an opera lover, I hate Regietheater, almost as much as I hate the recent trend to produce movie versions of known musicals, with major Hollywood stars who cannot sing.
Actually, no. I hate Regietheater more. 

Many moons ago, if my memory is not completely addled, somebody somewhere staged a Ring cycle with a neo-Nazi motorcycle gang interpretation!  Black leather jackets with metal studs and zippers abounded!

I recall the crowd booing enthusiastically at the end of one of the operas.

[The new erato]

I regard opera in some ways as a "historical snapshot" of a particular time and space, and ,like to watch it as that.

Modenization can work, good opera is about universal themes, but much modernization today centers around getting media coverage. I hate it when opera productions seem like reality shows and competes for media attention on those premises!

[Florestan]

Thanks to the criminal overrepetition of a ridiculously narrow slice of the classical repertoire, critics are understandably sated with the standard works.[...]The solution to the overrepetition of the standard repertoire is not to torture familiar works with self-indulgent distortions, but rather to put on unknown works. Thousands of eighteenth-century operas that almost no one has heard for 200 years were critical in the evolution of the art form. Our understanding of Mozart would be enormously improved by better knowledge of Johann Adolph Hasse or Tommaso Traetta, for example. Stendhal reels off dozens of composers who held the opera stage before Rossini swept them all away; surely some are worth hearing, if only for the sake of historical perspective. The later nineteenth century also contains lodes of unknown composers, as well as forgotten works by known composers, that would relieve the tyranny of the opera warhorses.

Excellent point.

We know comparatively little about how Don Giovanni was composed, but what's clear from Mozart's more well-documented composition processes, such as for Idomeneo, is his overriding concern with how an opera plays out dramatically on a stage. More than anything else, Mozart wanted these pieces to be successful as theater. That he also had a political agenda is an obsessive desideratum for the modern critic and director—but one that lacks documentary support.

Indeed, the over-politicization of 18th and 19th century operas in general and of Mozart in particular is one of the scourges of modern musical criticism and staging. Judging by some critics and directors, Wolffie was kind of a mixture of Martin Luther King, jr., Mahathma Gandhi and Andrea Dworkin. 

Did he poke (mild) fun at the upper classes? Certainly, as did hundreds of composers, writers and painters of his time. Did he allude to, or openly express, the vague, sentimental humanitarianism so typical of the Freemasons of his time? Of course, he was one of them. But that's just about it. Nothing in his life or letters backs the idea that he was preoccupied with "gender-class-race" issues, or with "political liberation", or with any other of the topics that some critics and directors read in his operas. And not only operas: I remember reading a critical study of the PC #20 which claimed the said concerto was proof for Mozart's repressed homosexuality.  Boggles the mind.

I regard opera in some ways as a "historical snapshot" of a particular time and space, and ,like to watch it as that.

Good point. To have one critic complaining about a Henry Tudor character being dressed like the historical Henry Tudor is to witness the top of ludicrousness: would he have preferred him to wear a T-shirt (perhaps inscribed with "Ann is cool, but her head is cooler!"), short trousers and flip-flops? 

Besides that, I regard opera as it was originally conceived: entertainment, with or without moral overtones. Opera lovers back then did not got to the theater to witness grand and bold philosophical, political and social statements; they went there to have fun and socialize, to admire the latest castratto or soprano in fashion, to marvel at complicated stage machinery and to watch an interesting (for them) story told in music they might or might not have liked. To think that a single one of them left the opera house deeply disturbed by, and compelled to ponder the political and social implications of, what he has seen and heard is "sheer lunacy", to quote myself. 

[Florestan]

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~benson/liederwolfe/Files/Liederwolfe_essay.pdf

[Cato]

I regard opera in some ways as a "historical snapshot" of a particular time and space, and ,like to watch it as that.

Modernization can work, good opera is about universal themes, but much modernization today centers around getting media coverage. I hate it when opera productions seem like reality shows and competes for media attention on those premises!

Amen to that  0:) and to Florestan's comments also!  0:)   Yes, sometimes the attitude is that the production is not a success unless the audience boos!   

The parallel phenomenon is found with productions of Shakespeare.

Imagine interpreting or "revising" Moby Dick as an environmentalist tract about saving the whales!

[Mandryka]

The best productions for me are minimalist ones, Peter Brook style. That forces the singers to act and interact. Sonmetimes I've seen the same sort of thing even in concert performances. I've become totally opposed to richly staged conventional unchallenging productions, at least for serious opera.

Peter Sellars seems to be able to get inspired performances from his musicians, however formulaic his thinking has become. In Theadora for example. Same for Bieito in Berg. In the case of the latter, for his use of choreography, I would say his staging of Berg is valuable, revealing. Same for his use of sex in the production of Don Giovanni. I thought the Copenhagen Ring was valuable too, and Chereau's first.

What do you guys think of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg? And Robert Wilson?

[MishaK]

Anything can be done well or done poorly. Regietheater can be brilliant when the Regisseur in question actually understands the medium (too many come from areas outside of opera and really don't love or even appreciate the artform as such, so their productions are more an act of overt warfare against opera than a genuine operatic production). In my years in Frankfurt, the Frankfurt Opera had some really imaginative modern productions of things like Monteverdi's Poppea and other works that really worked very well.

[mjwal]

Anything can be done well or done poorly. Regietheater can be brilliant when the Regisseur in question actually understands the medium (too many come from areas outside of opera and really don't love or even appreciate the artform as such, so their productions are more an act of overt warfare against opera than a genuine operatic production). In my years in Frankfurt, the Frankfurt Opera had some really imaginative modern productions of things like Monteverdi's Poppea and other works that really worked very well.

I saw that, and quite liked it. The conductor and his wife, who sang in the production, rented our flat while we were in France for a year. But for me the great period of the Frankfurt opera was the Gielen Intendanz with marvellous Ruth Berghaus productions of Mozart, Wagner (Parsifal, Der Ring des Nibelungen!), Strauss (Rosenkavalier!) and Janacek, among others. Peter Mussbach's later production of Ariadne auf Naxos in Frankfurt (1989) was the best I've ever seen - I cannot bring myself to go and see another (I've endured a couple of extraordinarily dull videos). He did a great Wozzeck, too. Jürgen Gosch did a superb Nozze di Figaro, and I've seen quite a lot. All these were Regietheater productions and, for me, blew away the cobwebs. The director most like what the critics of this rather vague category like to rant about was Hans Neuenfels, whose Aida was a gas (literally in the last scene). He got people frothing at the mouth but it was very successful with audiences. His Die Gezeichneten was much better than the recent one on DVD, and Doktor Faustus was a revelation. I also saw a couple of dodos, dripping with self-satisfied pseudo-post-modernity, which I have conveniently forgotten.

[MishaK]

Hey, mjwal, thanks for that! I only lived in FFM 03-06 and stopped by in 09/10, so I missed the Gielen period. The one I actually really don't get is Pierre Audi. I saw his production of Poppea (that opera again!) with Talens Lyriques at BAM and the concept was completely beyond me. It was part of a Monteverdi cycle that also featured the (very rightfully!) acclaimed Arts Florissants/Aix production of Ulisse (available on DVD) and a (bare bones) Chicago Opera Theater production of Orfeo. The contrast with the two made the Audi production all the more glaringly gratuitously bizarre. Same with the video of Audi's Salzburg Magic Flute with Muti/VPO. It's like teletubbies on steriods or something. Beats me what this has to do with anything.

[Decaffeinato]

I'm a big believer in the medium growing and adapting to modern tastes. That doesn't mean uncritically accepting any and all regietheater productions, but the world doesn't really need yet another La Traviata production steeped in hoops and taffeta; I thought the recent "red, white, and black" Met production (which originated elsewhere, IIRC) is a great example of updating a show to match modern tastes in a way that only improves it. 

[knight66]

I am happy to take on new interpretations of pieces. Otherwise, we end up with moving waxworks. Many directors have taken their concepts too far. Sometimes even small bits of tinkerng can radically affect the intent of the composer/writer. I really do not see that sitting the men's chorus in a line of open toilet cubicals does anything positive in Trovatore. But turning the gold in Rheingold into an aquatic golden covered youth provided all kinds of resonances.

This week I was at a cinema showing of the Covent Garden Flying Dutchman. I enjoyed it a great deal, semi abstract sets, time shifts both back and forth, no problem. We were given a synopsis to read. What I did object to was that at the end of the opera instead of Senta sacrificing herself to bring redemption to the Dutchman, he went off and she remained quietly gazing at a model of his ship! Had the synopsis explained the departure from Wagner's intent, that would at least have allowed the uninformed to grasp that the underlying story was significantly, well fundamentally, different. It certainly did not ruin the evening, though I felt the director had thrown out baby and bathwater. Most of Wagner's work focuses on the theme of redemption through loving sacrifice. So, the changed ending was distinctly an anti-climax. Every instance of directorial decision to update or depart from the original scenario needs to be looked at for its validity.

It is odd that the score has become increasingly a sacred relic and not to be tampered with in contrast to the visual and even sometimes the libretto where everything is up for grabs. I suppose views also cluster around whether or not you see opera as telling us anything about life or is simply an entertainment. I feel firmly the former in many of the masterpieces, clearly the latter in some lightweight bits of fluff. But the really great operas should at least in some measure hold up a lamp to illuminate or a mirror to reflect the human condition. That needs to be done in a relevent way for each generation.

Mike

[kishnevi]

I find that heterodox ending to Fl.Holl. an interesting take, at least thought-provoking.  But I view that through the filter of knowing Wagner's original intent, so you are right that the change should have been signalled in some way to those who are less focused on opera.