They’ve had plenty of time at Aldeburgh to plan next year’s Benjamin Britten centenary and plenty of anxiety to try something different when the whole world will be performing the major works.
Here’s what they’ve come up with (and you read it here first).
A year from now, on June 7, 2013, Peter Grimes will be staged on the Aldeburgh beach where the action takes place. It’s a bold and unprecedented bid for authenticity – and if it rains, no-one can complain. Tim Albery will direct, Steuart Bedford conducts and Alan Oke will sing Grimes.
Also in the season are major premieres fro Harrison Birtwistle, Wolfgang Rihm, Judith Weir, Magnus Lindberg and Richard Rodney Bennett.
Buy your brollies now.
To me, it sounds like one of those ideas that sounds really great late at night after a few glasses of whatever. Art is artiface. Only occasionaly is does it attempt to give the impression of reality and even then, the impression of reality is not the real thing. The famous film of West Side Story was made in the area of NY that inspired the story, but the stylized dancing looks particularly odd againts the background of real tenements. Likewise the film of Tosca that was set in the places the story depicts has poor Tosca running back and forth in a huge palace to get to her marks. At times it almost looks like an I Love Lucy episode.
Besides the unsuitability of staging this outdoors, and all that it implies, the question I have is this: how are they going to do the scenary changes? To be realistic enough Is everyone – orchestra and all – going to trudge down onto the local bar and court house? Will the storm occur on cue? If not, and the scenery is going to be built on the beach, then isn’t the beach itself irrelevent and does little but get in the way? And isn’t it then not so authentic if sets are built? And, never mind the rain, what about the seagulls? Remember what happened with the horses at the premiere of Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra.
I imagine that this is better than the kind of opera production that places a Mozart opera in a leather bar in Manhattan, or dresses Lulu up in leather, but, does it really add anything to what one gets from the performance, and is it worth what one loses?
Dan P.
Will there be Einstein on the Beach on the beach?