Jan Templiner writes in response to me:

>>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.
>
>Indeed. But why?

I think we've become more conservative (in the fullest sense) in our
attitude to music, whereas theatre by its very nature is of the here
and now.

Thanks to recording, we're infinitely more aware of a wider variety
of music written across time and space than any epoch in world history.
We are hyper-aware of what Cavalli, Lully, Monteverdi, Purcell actually
wrote - especially since the rise of "authentic" performance.

There is not, and cannot be, a theatrical equivalent to this "authentic"
approach.  We listen to the voice of Sir Henry Irving half in awe, half
in disbelief that anyone could have thought his acting style 'natural' and
'realistic'.  Theatre - and this applies to singers as much as actors - is
much more of a chameleon art, throwing out its conventions from generation
to generation, as words, meaning, pronunciation and accent change.  The
theatrical manners of yesterday are completely alien to us, for fashion
in acting styles, costume, production (there was no such thing as a Stage
Director in opera before Gilbert) and all the rest are dead letters which
cannot by their nature be convincingly resuscitated.

Margaret Mikulska's anecdote about the quasi-authentic Lully staging
is instructive.  These delightful historical recreations are just that,
simulacrums rather than living theatre.  Their charm relies on the fact
that they are attempting something which by its very nature is impossible.

There were, as she points out, no candles.  More crucially, I'll wager the
acting styles were a rigorously drilled modern imitation of what at the
Bourbon court passed for "natural" acting, an accepted gestural code which
to us has become as arcane as Peking Opera.

Doubtless Margaret's modern auditorium was darkened rather than lit by
chandeliers.  Certainly the audience would have been sitting reasonably
still and not chattering through the recitatives and ariettes of anyone
who didn't happen to be vocal flavour of the month.  These are not trivial
differences - the special quality of live theatre is the fact that the
audience's response is half the show.

Truly authentic Lullian conventions (not to mention the provision of
castrati in Handel!) would go so far beyond the pale of what is acceptable
within our own theatre, on both sides of the footlights, that no production
team in its senses would mimic them or attempt to bully its audience into
doing likewise.  Candles are the least of the problem.  What we're left
with is a charming, well-meaning mannerism which exists in a sort of
artistic limbo, like those weird attempts to reproduce Shakespearean
dramatic conventions and pronunciation (major matters which, significantly
enough, even the simulation Globe Theatre in London avoids like the
plague.)

>Perhaps the "old" staging would also provide a fresh angle, just as old
>instruments have brought a new angle to music thought as worn-out?

Aside from the intrinsic differences I've tried to articulate between
musical and theatrical revival, there's a practical point.  Whereas there's
enough music to make the study of "old" instruments a living proposition
for musicians, the opportunities for working in any particular outmoded
theatrical style would be too few and far between to make them worth ...
well, the candle.  Remember how long it took for "authentic" playing to
sound right or natural to a significant body of listeners.  For many,
even after years of constant exposure, it still does not.

With opera the problem is hugely magnified.  How many staged Lully
opera revivals are there each year, globally, let alone in one particular
country? And his stage conventions are different even from those of his
countryman Rameau, let alone Purcell or Handel.  Again, we don't have too
many royal patrons to pay for private performances; nor are there many
eighteenth century opera houses around, and today's larger playing spaces
absolutely demand fundamentally different vocal and theatrical techniques.
Unless of course you believe that we should only do "Dido and Aeneas" in
the school halls which Purcell wrote it for ...

>This is interesting.  I understand that you draw a line between (music-)
>theatre and concert.  Theatre is a living form, whereas the concert is a
>"dead" form, unless it programmes "new" music.

It sometimes seems that way.  The feeling is certainly around that concert
halls are in danger of becoming arid museums (witness the intriguing debate
about concert manners a few months ago).  Until the twentieth century
audiences took for granted that the majority of the music they would hear
would be of their own time.  It's instructive to look at the programmes for
Crystal Palace concerts in the 1870's, where over 50% of what was played
came from living composers.

>Of course it is impossible to create exactly the world of Mozart/da
>Ponte's time.  But I didn't demand that .....  Why is it not possible
>to let the Magic Flute (I don't have the score of a da Ponte opera here)
>begin in a "rocky area" and let Tamino wear "Japanese hunting clothes"?
>That does not mean the stage would have to be lit by candles.

"A rocky scene, with trees and hills on either side".  Well unless you're
demanding realistic painting and projections, what you'll get is always -
in our theatres - going to be a designer's interpretation of these things.
I've seen some magnificent "Magic Flutes" and I can't offhand think of
one that followed this stage direction literally.  I certainly didn't in
my production.  For audiences two hundred years on who positively demand
sub-text and interpretative comment this might mean staging the scene in
the New York subway, and why ever not?

For an 18th century audience the image of a man in "Japanese hunting
clothes, carrying a bow but no arrows" would have had very different
connotations from today.  I imagine that for them the costume might
have marked (a) something impossibly exotic and alien; (b) specifically
non-Christian; and (c) sexily within the fashionable orientalism of its
time.  The bow suggests the aristocratic hunter of oriental myth: again,
all factors which positively demand modern revaluation.

The designer who really did his historical homework on all this would
be quite justified in interpreting the text to make an equivalent impact
on modern audiences, few of whom have the deep historical awareness to
instinctively grasp the ramifications of Schikaneder's original image -
always assuming that it meant anything at all, which we might doubt (it
could equally well have been what he happened to have in his costume box
to fit the original Tamino!)

Frivolity aside, serious re-interpretation generally does not stem from
wilful disregard of the libretto, but is often a necessity arising from a
deeper sense of engagement with it.

Margaret Mikulska:

>Should we give Don Giovanni an electric guitar instead of mandolin?

Why ever not? Director Peter Sellars did just that a year or two ago,
and very effectively too.  Though, note: they didn't rescore the music
- a good example of the contrary pulls of radical-conservative between
staging and music which makes opera today so uncomfortable for a few,
and so stimulating for a good many more.

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