On Opera, and "auteur" directing:
There is a FB group which is dedicated to having opera produced in its original form--no changes, no adaptations--supposedly to be true to the composer's and librettist's "true intentions"...
I agree that some operas suffer from changing milieu...AIDA only works amidst the Pharaohs...FAUST should remain in the gothic miasma...moving TOSCA requires a complete revision of historical references and events...but there are some operas which scream for removal from their prisons of powdered wigs and endless ballets...
Opera was a populist art form...it reached out and touched--deeply--a contemporary audience...an audience which, when first introduced to the piece, expected a gala, with ballets and beautiful costumes...and which passed those expectations on to subsequent generations, each, in turn, more distant from the genesis of the work...
If anything, some pieces need to be stripped naked to find their core, then dressed with a fashion which helps to define the story and the "crisis" of the characters...My COSI FAN TUTTE was moved to 1912, on the cusp of The Great War which would if not kill then maim Romanticism for the next century..it added a certain poignancy to the antics on stage...
I am more convinced than ever that Massenet's MANON must be denuded of all the wigs and hoops and "frufru" which has traditionally muddied the core of the story--an ambitious young woman desperate for fame meets an enabling Romantic equally desperate for approval...a recipe for wonderful romance and inevitable disaster... I set it in Paris, 1941-43, during the Occupation...the wealthy are collaborators...the kids are young and foolish...the outcome, in the rail yards of Gare de L'Est, is a personal tragedy set against a global one, with death camp prisoners being marched to the cattle cars... no "sets", just projections and furniture...
If I die, remember this concept..it could take years (I don't have) to find a producing company....
