Robert Peters writes:

>2) I dont think that it is censureship to produce an opera or a play.
>Directors have to deal with the antisemitic tendencies in The Merchant of
>Venice for example.  The play is art, but the tendencies are there (I am
>NOT saying that the play is antisemic as a whole), and it is the directors
>duty to give a comment on it.  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.

This is a huge issue, and although the main thrust of Robert Peters'
argument can't be argued with, it does highlight an insoluble dilemma
in staging many operatic and theatrical texts.

"The Merchant of Venice" is an excellent case in point.  Many theatrical
practitioners feel (I would be one of them) that the play is unperformable
nowadays without offending against either (a) aesthetic or (b) ethical
integrity.  It is impossible to avoid nailing your colours to one of these
twin masts.  You can't choose both.

As to "dealing with" the play, I personally have never experienced a "The
Merchant of Venice" where the grim spectacle of directorial writhings
against the clear thrust of Shylock's villainy did not become the sole
focus of attention.  This reduces the other major characters of the play
to mere ciphers, and the play itself - at best - to an exercise in special
pleading.  But is there an alternative? Here, I think not for us here and
now.

Great plays, operas and zarzuelas are great precisely because they continue
to provoke difficulties, ambiguities, and challenging moral dilemmas.

"The Magic Flute" and "Carmen" are two other fine examples.  Directing "The
Magic Flute" for example, I chose to use W.H.Auden's crystal-sharp version,
not least because it eliminates the racial and misogynist elements of
Schikaneder's original.  Auden presents The Queen and Sarastro as two sides
of the same coin, which must be reconciled in order for the four young
people at the centre to make sense of their lives.  In doing this Auden was
in some sense circumventing Mozart, however brilliantly, but at least his
rewrite frees the piece for today's audiences from those unhelpful side
issues.

Where I would take issue with Robert Peters is in "wanting to know what
Director X has to say about Carmen".  It's a good example, because Bizet's
music - rarely but not uniquely for an opera classic - is subsidiary to the
libretto and stage action, and at times scarcely even informs it.  [It's
really a French zarzuela.  Indeed the best song - the Habanera - is largely
taken from a Spanish original by Iradier!]

No, the interest here lies in what Performer Z has to say about Carmen (and
Performer Y about Don Jose).  "Carmen" is a great, and complex, human drama
where directorial hijacks are doomed to failure.

Indeed, a more general shift of power away from the director-auteur towards
performers, writers and designers is long overdue.  Such a shift would do
much to solve the contemporary impasse which Robert Peters outlines, an
impasse which reduces pieces like "Merchant of Venice" and "Magic Flute"
in the theatre to the kind of anodyne, mainstream inconsequence which we
can only call decadent.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"