{"id":1133,"date":"2018-08-30T00:54:28","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T04:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2018-08-30T00:54:28","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T04:54:28","slug":"on-rescuing-a-dead-art-form-take-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2018\/08\/on-rescuing-a-dead-art-form-take-two.html","title":{"rendered":"On Rescuing a “Dead Art Form” — Take Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It seems to me pretty obvious that nowadays it\u2019s far easier to stage a successful Hamlet<\/em> or Three Sisters<\/em> than a successful Aida<\/em> or Siegfried<\/em>. And one reason is equally obvious: finding an actor to play Hamlet or Masha is no problem; finding a dramatic soprano for Aida or a Heldentenor for Siegfried is difficult to impossible.<\/p>\n

At the heart of Conrad L. Osborne\u2019s Opera as Opera<\/em> \u2013 the new, self-published mega-book that (as I wrote<\/a> in The Wall Street Journal<\/em>) surpasses all previous English-language treatments of opera in performance \u2013 is a complex argument exploring the less obvious reasons that theater lives and opera dies. Osborne encapsulates the differences in a single unforgettable sentence: \u201cFor a shining moment, opera seized the torch of orality\u2019s failing hand.\u201d That is: grand opera, a nineteenth century genre that flourished for something like a hundred years, grandly retained the rhetoric and gesture of poetry and drama \u2013 a grandiloquence of delivery otherwise discarded as artificial.<\/p>\n

An actor orating \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d has a range of choices: tempo, stress, pitch, articulation are all up for grabs. He can be declamatory or intimate. Not so the tenor singing \u201cCeleste Aida\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s all composed into Verdi\u2019s score.<\/p>\n

And there is more. Osborne shows that operatic plots cling to a \u201cmetanarrative\u201d based on conventions of courtly love that are today as anachronistic as Radames\u2019 outsized way of celebrating his beloved\u2019s attributes \u201cheavenly\u201d and \u201cdivine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osborne\u2019s historical perspective drives many of his book\u2019s insights and arguments \u2013 including an absolute condemnation of operatic Regietheater<\/em>. That is: the present-day predilection to re-date or resituate or otherwise alter operatic stories, not to mention the further predilection to deconstruct, casting doubt on composers and characters, in Osborne\u2019s opinion signifies a failure to reckon with the nature of the beast. As\u00a0theater and opera are not the same thing, he insists, neither is\u00a0Regietheater\u00a0<\/em>in theater and opera one and the same: opera’s distinctive pedigree yields distinctive challenges. He builds his case with such tenacious patience and detail that it at the very least strikes an urgent cautionary note.<\/p>\n

If my own perspective on Regietheater<\/em> is less jaundiced, it\u2019s because my first experience was exemplary. In the summer of 1977, the New York<\/em> Times<\/em> sent me to the Bayreuth Festival. It proved a charmed Bayreuth season. I experienced Patrice Chereau\u2019s seminal Ring<\/em> in its second year \u2013 when the irreplaceable Zoltan Kelemen was still singing Alberich (he died in 1979 at the age of 53). I attended Gotz Friedrich\u2019s landmark Tannhauser<\/em>, noisily premiered in 1972. And I attended the first performance of Harry Kupfer\u2019s still remembered Flying Dutchman<\/em>. The fourth Bayreuth production that summer, Wolfgang Wagner\u2019s Parsifal<\/em>, was a bland sequel to the famous abstract stagings of his late brother Wieland; it left no impression whatsoever.<\/p>\n

The first thing that amazed me about the work of Chereau, Friedrich, and Kupfer was the acting \u2013 better than any I had ever encountered attending opera in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, or Munich. As for the directorial interpretations and re-interpretations of story and text \u2013 they felt wonderfully provocative, thoroughly refreshing. They were also, I would say, a natural emanation of twentieth century European trauma, which dictated new readings of the past. Though the US experienced no such twentieth century debacle as the Great War or Adolf Hitler, Regietheater<\/em> eventually made the Atlantic crossing, as had serial composition \u2013 a comparable case of Old World aesthetic upheaval \u2013 some time before.<\/p>\n

I remember spending many hours debating the astonishing ways in which Patrice Chereau second-guessed Richard Wagner. He scaled down or contradicted the cycle\u2019s heroic speeches and deeds –beginning with those of Wotan, whose scowling face, stalking gait, and grasping gestures layered his \u201cnoblest\u201d utterances with duplicity. Among other things, Chereau\u2019s critique suggested an expose of the Ring<\/em> itself, of the alleged arrogance and fulsome rhetoric of its creator; he even dressed Wotan as Wagner.<\/p>\n

Looking back, however, what I most cherish about that 1977 Ring<\/em> is not its deconstructive panache. Rather, I most remember Chereau\u2019s human empathy for Loge, Mime, and Alberich \u2013 readings precisely comparable to Frank Corsaro\u2019s ingeniously compassionate treatment of Violetta in Verdi\u2019s La traviata<\/em> at the New York City Opera. Osborne, in Opera as<\/em> Opera<\/em>, lovingly recalls \u201cVioletta\u2019s pause\u201d: how in act one Corsaro daringly instructed Patricia Brooks to interpolate an unaccompanied pantomime preceding the expostulation \u201cE strano!\u201d (\u201cHow strange!”) and, thereafter, \u201cthe most intimate confessions of [Violetta\u2019s] soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Violetta\u2019s pause permanently transformed Conrad Osborne\u2019s experience of \u201cAh, fors\u2019e lui,\u201d so it was for me with Mime\u2019s shrug, as interpolated by Chereau and realized by the tenor Heinz Zednik. The Zednik\/Chereau Mime was a quick-tempered little Jew, fussy and devious, but never grotesque. Mime\u2019s brief act one narrative of Siegfried\u2019s birth and Sieglinde\u2019s death ends with the words \u201cSie starb (\u201cshe died\u201d). Zednik punctuated this information with a palms\u2019s up shrug \u2013 a sudden expression of civilized irony that stabbed the heart. (Go to 22:50 here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I will never again encounter anything like Kelemen\u2019s hapless Alberich, in the same Chereau production: a grimy, potbellied opportunist, too weak-headed to keep the ring but abused and angry enough to curse it effectively. In Gotterdammerung<\/em>, act two, Alberich instructs his son Hagen in evil. Chereau had him bow sheepishly before inquiring \u201cSchafst du [are you asleep?], Hagen, mein Sohn?\u201d Rather than hissing demands, he pled, \u201cSei Treu!\u201d [be true!] with the anguish of one who knows the game is up, then shuffled slowly and confusedly offstage. Dominated by his futile greed and false hopes, Alberich departed the drama a poignant victim; he acquired tragic stature. \u00a0(Go to 10:36 here<\/a> — but this is Hermann Becht, not Kelemen)<\/p>\n

Both these moments, I might add, were complemented by Regietheater<\/em> redatings: Mime\u2019s wire-rim glasses and Alberich\u2019s floppy coat resituated these characters in a drama tracking the sins of Wagner\u2019s own industrial age.<\/p>\n

As for the Kupfer Dutchman<\/em> that Bayreuth summer: he staged it as if fantasized by Senta. (It’s on youtube here.<\/a>) This hallucination anchored a case study in schizophrenia, replacing Wagner\u2019s legend of redemption through love. Theatrically, the main beneficiaries were Wagner\u2019s blandly sketched secondary characters. Believably portrayed as unwitting perpetrators of Senta\u2019s insanity, Daland and the sailors\u2019 wives took on added significance. As for Erik \u2013 rather than a dull-witted plea, his pathetic cavatina became an act of compassion. \u201cDon\u2019t you remember the day we met in the valley, and saw your father leave the shore?\u201d he sang, desperate to yank Senta back to reality. But the narrow expectations of Erik and her father were the problem, not the cure; in panic, she visualized the Dutchman as a defense. The subsequent trio, tugging equally in three directions, was transformed.<\/p>\n

Kupfer\u2019s reconception did no favors for the Dutchman himself \u2013 I cannot imagine Hans Hotter submitting to enacting this opera\u2019s title role as the figment of a deranged imagination. But Kupfer\u2019s handling of musical content was an astounding coup. The opera\u2019s riper, more chromatic stretches were linked to the vigorously depicted fantasy world of Senta\u2019s mind; the squarer, more diatonic parts were framed by the dull walls of Daland\u2019s house, which collapsed outward whenever Senta lost touch. In the big Senta-Dutchman duet, where Wagner\u2019s stylistic lapses are particularly obvious, Kupfer achieved the same effect by alternating between Senta\u2019s fantasy of the Dutchman and the stolid real-life suitor (not in Wagner\u2019s libretto) that her father provided. Never before had I encountered an operatic staging in which the director\u2019s musical literacy was as apparent or pertinent.<\/p>\n

Back in New York, the following season, the Met premiered its first adventure in Wagnerian Regietheater<\/em>: a Dutchman <\/em>piloted by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Ponnelle\u2019s conceit was to recast the story as a nightmare dreamt by Wagner\u2019s slumbering Steersman \u2013 a gratuitous revision which led, scenically, to something resembling a high school Halloween party. Even though the Met had Jose van Dam \u2013 a far better Dutchman than Bayreuth\u2019s \u2013 I remember not a single detail of this mis-production. And the same is true of the Robert Wilson Lohengrin<\/em> that Osborn skewers for eternity.<\/p>\n

Did Ponnelle read music? Does Wilson? I have no idea \u2013 but I gleaned no supportive evidence from their Wagner efforts at the Met. And this is one problem with Peter Gelb\u2019s regime. When Rudolf Bing took over in 1950, he imported notable stage directors \u2013 Alfred Lunt, Margaret Webster, Peter Brook, Garson Kanin \u2013 rather than engaging directors trained in opera. The idea was to blow some fresh air into an old house. How that worked out I do not know. But the results of engaging Robert Lepage to direct the Met Ring<\/em> on the strength of his prowess for special effects are by now notorious. In act three of Siegfried<\/em>, Wagner furnishes what may be the most psychologically complex love duet in all opera. In terms of stage action, nothing happens. To choreograph this duet \u2013 to block the singers \u2013 requires, I would say, detailed comprehension both of text and of musical structure. Lepage simply has Siegfried and Brunnhilde stand and sing. At a loss, he embellishes the duet with the Magic Fire that Wagner has specifically and poetically extinguished in order to create a magical stillness that Lepage cancels.<\/p>\n

I’ve had the pleasure of watching Dean Anthony rehearse young singers every summer at the Brevard Music Festival. All four Anthony stagings I\u2019ve encountered there \u2013 Sweeney Todd, Rigoletto, Street Scene<\/em> (cf this blog<\/a>), Britten\u2019s Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> \u2013 have more than worked. The productions were packed with brave directorial details \u2013 but they took the form of Violetta\u2019s pause and Mime\u2019s shrug. And they were musically informed.<\/p>\n

Dean Anthony came to opera-directing after a distinguished operatic career as a character tenor, assaying a wide variety of repertoire in several languages. He also trained as an actor, dancer, acrobat, and tumbler. (Kupfer and Friedrich were trained to direct opera by Walter Felsenstein — whose influentially revisionist Komische Oper receives a detailed report card from Conrad L. Osborne). That\u2019s a more promising cv, I would say, than directing Broadway musicals or Las Vegas circus spectaculars, however successful.<\/p>\n

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  It seems to me pretty obvious that nowadays it\u2019s far easier to stage a successful Hamlet or Three Sisters than a successful Aida or Siegfried. And one reason is equally obvious: finding an actor to play Hamlet or Masha is no problem; finding a dramatic soprano for Aida or a Heldentenor for Siegfried is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-ih","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1142,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}