It seems to me that there's a little bit of arguing at cross purposes
going on in this thread. There's four propositions being mixed and matched
and responded to:

  1. Sometimes staging an opera in a context other than the one
     originally intended by the composer leads to a poor, confusing,
     or inappropriate production.

  2. Staging an opera in a context other than the one originally
     intended by the composer always results in a poor, confusing,
     or inappropriate production.

  3. Sometimes strictly sticking to the staging direction in the
     libretto will lessen the relevance or power of the production.

  4. Sticking to the staging direction in the libertto will always
     lessen the relevance or power of the production.

I don't get the impression that anyone here fully believes 2 or 4,
although some of you seem to think the folks you're arguing with do.

My own take on this is that opera is large and expensive to produce,
and so producers and directors of opera are struggling to make opera
"relevant" to as large an audience is possible. Inasmuch as opera is a
commercial artform, they have to do this, and all the battles (including
the ones here) really boil down to what "relevant" means. I'm not a huge
opera buff, having seen only a few SF Opera productions, but I do know
that my enjoyment of what I'm seeing has a lot more to do with the comfort
and assurance of the ensemble (both orchestra and singers) than it does
the staging.

But then again, I grew up attending the Oregon Shakespearean Festival
in Ashland, Oregon, where they have both Elizabethan and modern stages,
and take full advantage of both. Staging _Coriolanus_ as a Chinese opera
set during the Cultural Revolution isn't that different from sticking
Wagner characters in Armani, and in the Shakespearean case, at least,
it worked, because the cast was solid and the direction deft and
unobtrusive. The same goes for their production of _The Three Musketeers_
on the Elizabethan stage.

Jan Templiner wrote:

>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?

Well, I'd start with the first part of your question -- just because
the orchestra is playing the same score that Donizetti wrote when he sat
down to compose _Lucia di Lammermoor_ doesn't mean that they perform it
the same way that an ensemble in the 19th century would have. Playing
styles, orchestral composition, and (most critically, in the context of
this discussion) conducting have all seen significant changes in the
intervening years. Is conducting really all that different from stage
direction? (Really -- I don't intend that rhetorically.)

I would draw the analogy libretto: score:: staging: conducting.  It's
an imperfect analogy, because it treats what the singers are doing as
acting more than singing (which I don't believe to be the case -- has
anyone here ever read Samuel R Delany's excellent essay on opera, and
how it differs from "pure" singing and acting?), but it'll do for purposes
of discussion. That is, the staging isn't an inherent part of the libretto
any more than the musicians are to be held to 19th century performance
standards (which is probably a good thing)..

>>The current assumption that settings must be true to libretto is an
>>artistic dead end.
>
>Yes. Because everyone just says "No, I don't wanna do that".

Aw, be nice. I'm sure that's a part of it, but, using the Wagner example
again, Wagner had some pretty specific (if ambiguous) bits of ideology
and belief he was trying to communicate with the Ring cycle, and modern
audiences aren't as well versed in Teutonic mythology as they once were,
which makes it harder to catch the allusions he was making via implication.
There are valid reasons to attempt to recast the look and feel of a
dramatic work in a contemporary mode. If producers start monkeying with
the text of the libretto, that's a separate matter. And if they're trying
to convert opera singers into something they're not (namely fully-fledged
actors), that's a problem too.

>... [R]aping a work isn't exactly a good quality concept. Yes, sure,
>it's magnificent for the director's ego, but for the work it's
>pretty lethal.

What constitutes raping a work?

>Why does no one think of changing music to make it tell us something
>about today? Where's the beard added to the Mona Lisa? That
>certainly would trach us soooooooo much about modern times.

Perhaps you were thinking of this already, but that's exactly what
Marcel Duchamp did with his L.H.O.O.Q. back in the high age of Dada. It
did a pretty good of getting the panties of a lot of people in a bunch
at the time, too. Whether anyone understood what he was trying to say
is debatable, but he was definitely up to *something*.  And see what I
said above about modern musical performance practice and conducting --
the music changes, even if the notes don't.

PS -- First list posting. Hi, everybody.

Forrest