Jan Templiner replies to Anne Ozorio:

>>In other forms of music we appreciate performers bringing some
>>insight into what they perform, but just play the notes mechanically.
>>Should opera should be an exception?  Freezing any art form can kill it.
>
>I really don't understand this. I'd be so happy if anyone could try to
>help me out. Why is it possible to fill out the notes with meaning without
>significantly altering them, whereas a drama needs to be put in a place
>far away from the original?

I wonder why this business of 'original settings' is becoming such a
sticking point for Jan? He's concerned to follow what's written in the
libretto, but it's worth pointing out how almost invariably even the
very first production of a play or opera departs from the written
directions to some degree or other.

Presumably this is usually with the composer's at least tacit agreement:
Nicholas Maw bowed to Trevor Nunn's theatrical expertise in altering
many stage directions (and some of the music) in "Sophie's Choice" for
the first production, because they couldn't work here and now at Covent
Garden in 2002. However, they're still there in the text for future
reference.

The first production of Judith Weir's "Blond Eckbert" set one scene,
clearly delineated in the libretto as a mediaeval German wood (as per
Tieck's novella), under an American motorway flyover. Whether or not
this added to the impact of the scene, the mere fact of such dislocation
did no violence whatsoever to the spirit of the piece, nor did any
audience members to the best of my knowledge find it either confusing
or silly.

Should we perform Handel's "Tamerlano" in mediaeval Mongol and Persian
getup? To do so would go against the ethos of the whole work, which is
grounded in 17th/18th century concepts of order against divine right.
No, an 18th or 20th century setting is much more appropriate. A production
of mine even set in it 19th c. revolutionary Cuba, without violence
either to Handel's drama or his music; at all events, fox furs and
yashmaks were not a practical option for us!

Part of Anne Ozorio's point was that operas have often not been staged
in the time and place specified by the libretto, even at first. Her
example of Wagner's own stagings of his operas is a very good one: he
didn't set his Bayreuth "Lohengrin" in a realistic Mediaeval Brabant
water meadow any more than he set "The Ring" in the land of the sagas.
As the Matter of Germany was infinitely more important to him than the
matter of either the Low Countries or Iceland, as a designer he set both
of them in his own, fantastic 19th c. vision of Teutonic myth, to which
'real' mediaeval or dark age places or people were subsidiary. Brabant
was certainly not on the itinerary for "Lohengrin"'s creator.

What's more - horror of horrors! - he sometimes disobeyed his own stage
directions. For example, Wolfgang Wagner was the first director to attempt
the 'transformation music' between scenes in Act 1 of "Parsifal" without
the unsanctioned bringing down of the curtain. The direction in my full
score makes it quite clear that Gurnemanz and Parsifal should remain
onstage throughout, walking to the Grail Castle as backcloths revolve.
His canny grandfather, one imagines, realised that if it couldn't be
done well, it was better off kept in the audience's imagination than
staged as written. Please Note: he didn't change his text, but he did
recognise that theatre is a pragmatic, demanding art form which has to
respond to the here and now.

I wonder how the cunning old theatrical fox would react to today's
stagings? Who can say. One thing I'm quite sure of: whatever he might
have thought of the stagings, he'd have adored the controversy! For him,
it was 'Opera as Drama' or nothing at all.

(Gilbert as director was even more radical in tampering with the texts
and stage directions of his Savoy Operas in the heat of production.
Check any of the scripts against his prompt books and the fundamentalists
will get a real shock! Note again: he didn't alter the 'theory' of the
published scripts, but often changed his 'practice', in HMS Pinafore for
example, to reflect current theatrical fashions.)

The whole point is that the libretto - just like the score - doesn't get
burned in the production process. It's still there afterwards as a fixed
reference point. It's the positive duty of every production to re-examine
both score and text according to the theatrical manners of its own time:
and it's in the nature of theatre, as several contributors have argued,
that the libretto will require more thorough re-examination than the
score, a fact which applies even at the time and place for which the
opera is written.

I can sympathise with Jan for finding this messy, and yearning to keep
things pure. Alas, theatre can by its nature have nothing to do with
this theoretical purity: but it does - sometimes - work!

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