Anne Ozorio writes, in part:

>l...Regietheater stems from a need to get back to the underlying imagery
>in the music and to express what was symbolic in it.  Its roots are the
>Expressionism of the 1920's, an era in which theatre arts blossomed as
>much as music did.  Expressionism means, loosely, that meaning can be
>conveyed other than through the literal and that art should spark off a
>process in the viewer, who cannot remain passive....

Essential to expressionism is the artist's striving to make objectively
accessible to those he/she addresses  the artist's inner experience.
Regieoper directors  in "updating" older operas all too often forget
that the original composer's and the original lyricist's efforts in this
sense deserve respect-- and if they had a hand in the original staging,
that should be respected, too.  Thus in Everding's modern staging
of Meistersinger--which I cited as an example in a earlier posting--
he made do by  serving the message of the finale on wry, and did well
to do so, instead of turning it into a paean to either contemporary
Christian Socialism or Socialismo o Morte!  But it's no rarity in
Regieoper nowadays when things go the other way.  Alas.

Denis Fodor