Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>I guess one of the things that bothers me is the lack of a style in
>opera -- something which has conventions of meaning one can latch onto
>-- like the Broadway stage or early Thirties American gangster movies
>or classical French stage acting or Shakespearean acting at the RSC,
>none of which can be called, properly speaking, realistic.

This is a really interesting point.  Looking back through history,
opera has mainly battened off the prevalent contemporary acting style of
straight theatre, in simplified form.  There are few examples where opera
has led the vanguard in terms of style, and those - exclusively as far
as I'm aware - have been in pushing design technology (e.g.  France under
Louis XIV) or theatre conventions (Wagner putting out the auditorium
lights, or G&S using electric ones) rather than on the acting front.

"A style" is asking a lot, anyway, where opera singers have to deal with
the stylistic demands of so many different periods and conventions in
the works themselves - as well as the conventions of our own time, and
the personal styles of so many itinerant, strong-willed directors.

"One size fits all" is a practical impossibility.  I'd say that some
houses, at certain times, have had a house style (Covent Garden under
Brook, Bayreuth under Wieland Wagner) which did beneficially pervade the
work, but those moments were Snow in June.

It's a fair reason for discomfort - but then there are so many things
to worry about in these "mixed" stage forms, that I feel it's just another
one we should strive to suspend whilst we're actually in the theatre.

Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK
http://www.zarzuela.net
"ZARZUELA!" The Spanish Music Site