Sunday, August 12, 2012

Enough regietheatre!

I want to talk about something, but I am not quite sure how to describe my problem.  Basically I want to talk about two DVD's I have watched recently and how they compared and why one annoyed me intensely, and one didn't. But at the same time, I want to explain why it was not just a knee jerk reaction, but rather, it was a reflection on why I think so much of opera, and especially German opera, is heading down a dangerous path, that will end in tears, not the glory they seem to feel.

I would have liked to have started with videos from the relevant DVD's but youtube seems not to have any of either of the relevant ones, so, here are a couple that may help you understand.

Exhibit A



Exhibit B





Ok, now you get a sense of what I am talking about, the conflict between opera as bringing extant text to life versus bringing the director's ideas and nightmares to life while singing something that may or may not have anything to do with what they are surrounded by. I jest, but you get my drift.

The particular DVD's were Tannhauser as performed by The Danish Opera vs Das Rheingold as directed by Herbert von Karajan in a production created purely for film. Needless to say, the Danish one (directed by Kasper Holten) was the one that annoyed me intensely, while Karajan the traditionalist was the one that stuck to the storyline allowing the story to tell itself. It also made me wish that he had been able to do the other 3 operas in the Ring cycle as intended. Not because I think he was a gifted director, but because he was happy to allow the story to tell itself, without feeling the need to add his personal ideas to intrude into the story.

On the other hand, Kasper Holten's direction involved him writing a new scenario, and then shoehorning the opera into that. Now, in theory, I have nothing against that, so long as you can make it work. To do that, you have to make sure everything can be made to work within your scenario. And that the subtitles/subtitles do not make people laugh out loud because they go against everything your scenario states. Which happened for me on several occasions.

I guess part of my problem is that I come from a background of not seeing a lot of opera, but knowing a lot of operas from their music. At one stage, I had performed in more operas than I had seen. So, as a result, while I know the works, I am not always familiar with what particular performers are famous for doing on stage, but rather how they sound doing a role. So, for me, the operas first and for most are about what is written in the score. The idea that performed opera should be about something more than the music and words, but rather about the director's own neuroses and fixations I find frankly annoying. I mean, it is not as if any of the composers were not a mass of contradictions and fears and stuff like the rest of us, far from it! Many of them, lets be honest, are people that we would not want to know in person, or find frankly offensive if we met them in person.

But that is not my concern. I mean, some of my favourites were horrid people. Wagner is well known for being horrible to everyone who knew him. But, that was not the point.

My concern is more about a need to respect the work. These are works (in most cases) that have stood the test of time. The vast majority of operas that are performed regularly are over 100 years old. They continue to be performed because they speak to us, because they fill our lives with something more. They speak to us through the combination of music, story and words. The words inevitably ending third, not because they are lesser, but how many of us speak multiple languages and can catch the words sung at us across the room? We get the story, but the meaning is carried by the music and the actions on stage, as well as the words, (and by the surtitles in the theatre, assuming we can see them), and how that is brought to life before us.

So, if the staging does not bring the story to life, but rather detracts from our understanding of the story, how can it be a good thing? Unless your whole purpose in going is to see colour and movement and hear pretty sounds? And, if that is the case, why bother with opera? I mean, operas are all about life at the extreme, where life is dangerous, intense and confusing. Its not for nothing that many of the best operas deal with the myths and legends of our past that we have created to explain the world that we struggle to understand, its because that is how opera works best, by making our most primeval stories into art and sanity.

So, if at its heart, opera is about telling the stories that matter to us, why do we settle for stagings that end up leaving people more confused than when they start? I mean, for that matter, if the story that is being told matters so little to the director and those in charge of the company producing it, why bother with staging it? Why not stage something they like? Like, something they wrote perhaps? Oh, yes, well, that might not work out so well, hey? Who wants to see something that no one knows about? But a known piece of work that is reworked by modern artists? Which sounds great, except most of the time it seems that our understanding of the work, is not helped but hindered.

So, you see where I am at. Why should I want to go see something that has as its focus, not what the writer's intentions, but what those who put it together seem to have as fixations? Why should I be expected to have to choose what I go to see based on who is directing it, and whether I can cope with his (or her) nightmares enacted on stage, rather than just worrying about whether I like the particular show, or whether the performers in question have the abilities to sing the roles?

I want to go and see and hear things that are special. I want to go and experience the other, to get a sense of things beyond myself. I also want to come away thinking about the story and the plot and the music, and not "How fucking stupid was that thing they did in the third act to cover the plot hole they created" which was what I thought when I watched Tannhauser.

*end rant

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