Bernard Chasan:

>Indeed, what Jan calls "concept opera" seems in some instances at least
>to be characterized by effects of mind boggling triviality. Putting a
>Mozart opera in the Trump Tower, dressing Wagnerian characters in Armani
>suits- these  hardly rise to the level of "universal themes, expressed
>symbolically with a minimum of superficial stage effects."  They are
>sophomoric and callow .(IMHO, of course.)

As a callow sophomore myself (only emotionally, of course), I found
Marriage of Figaro in the Trump Tower dramatically effective.  It clarified
the power relationship between Countna (in this production, a woman with
a green card) in a way that the powdered-wig versions I'd seen had pretty
much obscured.  In the Sellars account, the "saucy, eighteenth-century
bawdy" sex comedy retreated to the background and the revolutionary
aspect of the Mozart-da Ponte-Beaumarchais story came front and center.
Indeed, the specifics of the libretto for me, at any rate, hide to a
great extent the moral ugliness of the Count behind quaint costume and
scenery and an intervening distance where something that mattered has
become farcical froth.  The Beaumarchais was, after all, a scandal in
its day and in fact has been cited by several historians as a signpost
to the French Revolution.  You get some of that in the Sellars production.
Do I think the production a version for the ages?  How can I?  Pretty
soon our own era will itself degenerate into the quaint.  Someone else
will have to shake things up.

Steve Schwartz