Robert Peters writes:

>...I dont think that it is censureship to produce an opera or a
>play...Just to show the opera as it was, is and will be according the
>libretto would be a terrible bore and not worth the money.  I want to know
>what Director X has to say about Carmen.  I can read the libretto at home....

That's a fair enough way of stating the 'modernist' approach to the
problem.  But bowdlerizing a text to make it accord with modish standards
is a form of censorship.  When well done, the practice may be excused as
a successful grafting of one artistic effort upon another.  But generally
these Regieopern have become a bore in their own right.  They are often
badly thought-through and cliched.  Director X may turn out have something
revealing or prepossessing to say about Carmen, but mostly he comes up with
something inchoate that feels forced and jejune.  The main thing about a
production of Carmen is the quality of the singing, the quality of the
acting, the quality of the music.  The director should be in charge of
this quality control but in other endeavors remain modest and uncensorial.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]