Jan Templiner would like some evidence as to why staging is important
to opera, but I don't really think he needs it.  His own posting is as
clear a manifesto of "music first" fundamentalism as could be wished.
For him, as for many people down the ages, staging, theatrical technique
and even the libretto itself are, as I put it, no better than optional
icing on the musical cake.

I have no quarrel with this.  For example, I asked a straight question
as to why staging should be condemned to second-best?  Jan replied with
equal straightness:

>Because it isn't as important as the music.  Because there is no evidence
>visible to me that suggest that the producer is anywhere nearly as
>important as the conductor.

Now this is not wrong.  Nor is it right.  It is simply a fundamentalist
assertion, so no amount of evidence from the other side of the question
is going to convince Jan that it ain't quite as simple as that.  Would
that it were!

I've been involved in productions where either maestro or stage director
had more muscle.  I've also been involved in some where the singers
called the shots.  I can only repeat that, like Simon Rattle, my most
satisfying experiences have been of the collaborative kind where no one
individual was any more "important" than anyone else - and in those case,
the satisfaction on our side of the footlights has usually been reflected
in audience response, too.

>>Whether "what's in the score" extends to "what's in the libretto" remains
>>as open a question as ever.
>
>I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.  Could you elaborate?

When it comes to the stage, the libretto can - and to some degree must
- be considered as independent of the score, with its own demands and
motives.  The composer doesn't "own" it; his music is simply one
interpretation of it.  Well, usually: in the case of "King and Collier"
Dvorak made two completely different settings of one libretto!

In many twentieth century repertory pieces it is specially crucial to
take the libretto seriously.  "The Rake's Progress", for example, amply
repays study as a straight text quite apart from Stravinsky's music,
which arguably oversimplifies Auden's conception.  Or, on another tack,
try to imagine anyone getting much out of a Janacek opera without knowing
precisely what's going on, especially in "The Makropulos Case" or "The
House of the Dead".

When we see opera in the theatre - those of us who like to see it there,
which many of the fundamentalist "music firsters" don't - the libretto
and its stage directions draw attention from the music to a degree which
they can't when we listen in the drowsy comfort of our armchairs - where,
with respect, we only get half the experience.

As I've tried to express before, the problem which those of us who take
opera seriously as a stage art have to solve, is that the plethora of
wildly divergent stage conventions in which the "old masters" worked are
today about as distant from us as the dinosaurs.

>Nonsense.  If it is possible to recreate the music making of bygone
>times, why is it impossible to recreate the other arts?  ...
>Musicians get training as to play in "period practice", why would it be
>impossible to teach singers to act HIP?

Even if we accepted for a moment that Jan's wish might be desirable,
there is no possibility of it being remotely practicable.  The idea that
not just the performers but - crucially - the audience could be magically
imbued with a workable, simultaneous understanding of the theatrical
conventions of Gluck, Handel, Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Mozart, Vives,
Janacek and Adams (a typical mix from an average-adventurous American
opera season) or that the theatres themselves could be equipped to deal
with their vastly different stage, lighting and costuming demands is,
of course, quite simply absurd.

Take Restoration England (Purcell through Handel).  We know a little
about contemporary musical techniques; we know a little less about dance
steps and gestures; we know next to nothing about acting conventions,
apart from the ragbag of stock "bows" that have been handed down in the
manner of Chinese-whispers.  We don't pronounce the words the same,
either.  Have you heard Purcell performed in original pronunciation?
It's unintelligible!  Until the invention of the phonograph and cinema,
acting (mercifully) was an ephemeral art.  Turning to other matters,
gaslights are no longer allowed, so goodbye echt-Wagner and Verdi for
a start!

In other words, even if it were desirable, we cannot get anywhere
near the original stage directions or staging practices.  End of story.
Instead - as a pragmatic compromise if you like - we have to reinterpret
them in terms of the theatre conventions of our own time.  We happen to
prefer symbol to realism, image to concrete, interpretation to statement;
and that - for better or for worse - is the lingua franca of what we
have to work with.

>For whatever reason cna you justify performing Lohengrin in some kind
>of a school (or whatever Konwitschny did)?

(Konwitchny the conductor?  Did he do the production?) I don't think I
need to "justify" it.  I think Jan, or someone else who saw it, needs
to say why it *didn't* work for them, and why they would have preferred
it put in boggy mediaeval meadow.  Others might then counter with their
experience of why it *did* work, in helping illuminate the complexities
of Wagner's subtle mythic-psychic stage action, or whatever.

I can talk about a very great production of Dvorak's "Rusalka" (ENO,
d. David Pountney, c. Mark Elder), set in the white-walled ward of a
children's orphanage with a swimming pool in the middle.  I suspect Jan
would have disliked it on principle: where were the woods suggested by
Dvorak's score and the libretto?  Where was the Moon for Rusalka's famous
song?  Certainly not on stage.  Rather, the creative tension between
music and staging which created an unforgettably poignant impact on
virtually everyone who saw it.

This "Rusalka" was completely at odds with the letter of the libretto,
completely at one with the spirit of the score: the tragedy of lost
innocence, our inability to recapture the pastoral paradise of childhood,
the alien dangers of the adult world ...  All this was expressed, not
by a doomed museum-attempt to recreate a picture-book fairy wood made
of two-dimensional painted canvas (which served the Czech audience of
Dvorak's time, I'm sure, perfectly well) but by an uncompromising modern
staging using the best current theatrical techniques.  The music, after
all, is worthy of that best.

>Please explain why for directors it should be different.  If they are
>oh-so-creative, please, they should write operas.  I'll do my very
>best to attend them.

That's like saying that if I can't play the piano like Horowitz then
I shouldn't criticise his playing.  Directors are critical facilitators:
maybe the reason why Jan and the rest of the "music firsters" get so
badly needled is that, according to their lights, we benighted theatricals
must strive to quarry the spirit rather than the letter of the libretto,
and sometimes this can produce a more sophisticated, less comfortable
relationship of text to music.

No. Fresh interpretation from generation to generation is in
reality the only thing that can keep opera with us as a living art form.
Of course, I realise quite well that none of this will persuade the
fundamentalist "music firsters"; but maybe it will convince a few agnostics
to join the New Janos in opening their heads and hearts to the thrills
as well as the spills of our modern music theatre!

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"THE ZARZUELA COMPANION" (Scarecrow Press) Foreword by Placido Domingo