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From an American singer-director, who prefers to remain anonymous for the
sake of possible future employment -
How to Opera Germanly:
1) The director is the most important personality involved in
the production. His vision must supercede the needs of the
composer, librettist, singers and especially the audience, those
overfed fools who want to be entertained and moved.
2) The second most important personality is the set designer.
3) Comedy is verboten, except when unintentional. Wit is for TV
watching idiots.
4) Great acting is hyperintensity, with much rolling and the
ground, groping the wall and sitting on a bare floor.
5) The audience's attention must be on anything except the person
who is singing. A solo aria, outmoded even in the last century,
must be accompanied by extraneous characters expressing their
angst in trivial ways near, on or about the person singing the
aria.
6) Storytelling is anathema to the modern director, like realistic
"photographic" painting is to the abstract painter. Don't tell
the story, COMMENT on it! Even better, UNDERMINE IT!
7) When singing high notes, the singer must be crumpled over,
lying down or facing the back of the stage.
8) The music must stop once in awhile for intense, obscure miming.
9) Sexual scenes must be charmless and aggressive. Rolling on
the floor a must here.
10) Unmotivated homosexual behavior must be introduced a few
times during the evening.
11) Happy endings are intellectually bankrupt. Play the opposite.
Insert a sudden murder if at all possible.
12) Avoid entertaining the audience at all costs. If they boo,
you have succeeded.
13) Rehearse it until it's dead. Very important.
14) Any suggestion of the beauty and mystery of nature must be
avoided at all costs! The set must be trivial, contemporary and
decrepit! Don't forget the fluorescent lights! (Klieg lights
also acceptable.)
15) The audience must not know when to applaud or when the
scene/act ends.
16) Historical atrocities such as the Holocaust or the AIDS
epidemic must be incorporated and exploited as much as possible.
Also the lifestyle of the audience must be mocked.
17) Colors are culinary. Black, white and gray only!
18) The chorus must be bald, sexless, faceless and in trench
coats.
19) If the audience is bored, this is art.\
20) Props are items of junk piled in a corner of the set. They
must be overused pointlessly, then dropped on the floor, hopefully
when the music is soft. Be careful to keep dangerous objects at
the lip of the stage so the blindfolded dancers can kick them
into the pit.
21) All asides must be sung next to the person who is not supposed
to hear them.
22) The leading performers faces must be painted as a white mask
to ensure no individuality or variety of expressions, as opera
singers can't act anyway. They just want to pose and make pretty
sounds.
23) Preparation is important. Try to read the libretto in advance
to make sure it doesn't interfere with your staging ideas. Not
much harm in listening to the CD once, though that's not really
your job.
24) Make the conductor feel useful, though he's really a literal
minded hack.
25) The stage director must avoid any idea that is not his own, though that
idea will surely be on this list already.
26) A costume must serve at least two of the following criteria: a) Make the
singer look unattractive b) Obscure his vision c) Make hearing the orchestra
difficult d) Impede movement d) Contradict the period in which the opera is
set (hardly worth mentioning)
Janos Gereben/SF
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