Jan Templiner replies to Chris Webber:

>>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.
>
>I'm not quite sure that I agree here.  You're basically saying that
>the libretto could be perofrmed without the music just as well, no?

I don't believe so, although Mr. Webber can speak for himself.  I believe
Mr. Webber is saying that a libretto can be set several ways by different
composers.

>>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 [various times] 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.
>
>But why is it possible ot accept the musical conventions?  And literal
>ones?  Noone really says that reading Shakespeare is impossible and it
>therefore needs a modern transliteration, and the time of "musical
>transliterations" (eg.  the various Bach-arrangements) is gone, too.
>Why should this be impossible for acting?

Perhaps because acting depends more than the others on the illusion
of reality, which changes far more rapidly than musical conventions.
Furthermore, the point about Shakespeare is particularly inapt.
Shakespeare performed in Elizabethan style and pronunciation is pretty
much unlistenable.  Indeed, it hardly sounds like English.

>A question from a rookie without insider knowledge: is it theatre
>convention of our time that dramas shouldn't take place where the
>text/libretto suggests it?

Not really.  The reason why some productions change time is to
illuminate some aspect of the story told.  I've already recorded my
praise of Sellars's productions of Don Giovanni and Marriage of Figaro.
The point was not simply to change time for the sake of changing time,
but to clear away certain conventions of traditional production that
obscured the dramatic force of the operas.  Similarly, I loved Bergman's
film of The Magic Flute, a wonderful fantasy on the nature of theater,
rubbing one's nose in the limitations of the stage and simultaneously
exalting their emotional power.

>This is all very nice blahblah.  The essential question (and I'm very
>serious about it, I want to understand) is why the drama needs to be
>placed elsewhere than the libretto suggests.

The question can be turned around: why does the drama need to remain in
the original place and time.  As I say, I have seen good and bad productions
of both sorts.  Consequently, I'm not absolutely for one side or the
other.  However, to dismiss "director's opera" out of hand seems a bit
limiting.

It seems to me that since Wagner, at any rate, composers view opera as
drama rather than as a vocal and orchestral exhibition.  Why write an
opera, after all, if you can write a cantata or an oratorio or a song
cycle?  Unfortunately, audiences seem mainly concerned with the vocal
and orchestral exhibition.  One thing "director's opera" tries to do,
even if it doesn't always succeed, is to put the emphasis on drama,
rather than on pretty or powerful sounds.

Steve Schwartz