Jan Templiner <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>If operas are stage as ridiculously as they are nowadays, there is no real
>point in refusing to alter the music as well. On the contrary, it is quite
>an obvious choice.
Leaving aside for a minute the value judgement about modern opera staging,
it's an interesting point as to why the musical side of opera has become
ever more sacrosanct the greater the directorial deviation from the
libretto.
>However, I for one absolutely disagree with the policy of staging operas
>differently than demanded in the score. I don't think that works ever
>enter public domain, morally. I believe that a composer's work should be
>left untouched, and performed with utmost fidelity to the score, and that
>does of course include the staging.
Now hang on. The music generally is left untouched, as we'd agree.
Even where one person (e.g. Judith Weir) is responsible for both, it is
the librettist not the composer who is considered fair game for 'auteur'
vision or conceptual staging. Here, surely, is a clue to the resolution
of the paradox - though it suggests another, one intimately connected with
the time-honoured 'words versus music' debate.
In the 21st century opera house, music is considered the most important
component. It is considered very bad form to cut "The Ring" and even "The
Marriage of Figaro" (which is at least arguably improved by some judicious
pruning of Act 4). Yet paradoxically, what continues to draw audiences to
these tired, old museum pieces is the fresh angle provided by the "modern"
staging - I hear very few regular opera-goers complaining about
contemporary staging, although more armchair listeners do (perhaps that's
why they stay away).
Here is the new paradox - the music is fossilised, the staging provides the
impetus. For theatre is a living art form. We simply cannot reproduce the
old conventions of a bygone age - if you tried to stage "Don Giovanni" with
the fidelity to Da Ponte's directions demanded by Mr Templiner you would
have something which would be a mixture of the risible and the
incomprehensible to modern theatrical and aesthetic tastes.
To ask for the "original staging" (even where we know how it was done) is
rather like asking to preserve ice in fire. It is impossible, even if it
were desirable.
>If people so desperately want to create something "new" and "exciting",
>they're free to composer new works, write new operas. I do my best to
>give them a fair choice and listen and see.
I agree. There's far too much emphasis on the tired, old stuff and not
enough new work in the opera house. More productions of more new pieces,
with less money spent on them individually, would be a healthier solution
to the greatest operatic paradox of all - the exponential spiralling cost
of cherishing fewer and fewer performances of an ever-diminishing
repertoire.
That, not "modern" staging (which is cheaper on the whole!) is the problem.
Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"
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