Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>One reason, I should think, that "director's opera" doesn't often work
>is that directors actually see the opera as drama.

True. But then, once we get into the theatre and onto the stage, there's
no option not to see Opera as Drama.

Irritatingly, perhaps, many of the most revealing stage productions have
historically been done by directors without musical background or even
interest. As Steve outlines, they weren't hampered by preconceptions of
the performance tradition. There's a famous story, alas quite true, about
the musically innocent John Gielgud directing "Don Giovanni" at Covent
Garden. One of his stage pictures went awry, and he raced down towards
the stage in a fury shouting "For God's sake somebody stop that ghastly
music!"

>Very few singers, on the other hand, have the acting chops to carry
>off a straight play.  I say this as a singer with some stage
>experience.  It is the most difficult thing for me to sing and move at
>the same time.

It is. I've worked with at least two opera singers acclaimed as "great
singing-actresses", and quite frankly neither of them would have wowed
Harrogate Rep. on a wet Wednesday. What they did have was huge personal
charisma allied to outstanding musical and vocal gifts: and in most opera
productions just one of those qualities will be enough to make for a
perfectly acceptable stage performance.

Standards of acting in opera have improved enormously, thanks to the
efforts of the better academies to make stage arts an intrinsic part of
every singing course; and part of the director's job is to help his cast
maximise their theatrical effectiveness.

In opera the acting is only half the story, so singers generally get by.
It's more difficult, I agree, where there's spoken dialogue: that's why
"The Magic Flute", "Fidelio", "Carmen", zarzuela and Gilbert & Sullivan
present special problems, which ideally require specialist artists.

I've often thought that "Fidelio", for example, has suffered down the
years from heavy, monumental-oak productions. This may largely be down
to directors' having to work around wooden acting from Wagnerian singers,
though it's also something to do with conductors' innate reverence for
a sacred score. The results can be gruelling, on CD as much as in the
theatre (name your own Maestro).

The piece itself is at root a light singspiel "thriller", and works best
when treated as such (c.f. Fricsay's fleet version on CD). Then it *can*
blossom into something philosophically as well as musically substantial,
but it's no good trying to push these qualities up front. The audience
has to discover them for itself.

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