In 1960 i saw a modern dress production of Fidelio at the Frankurt Opera. The prisoners were concentration camp inmates; the soldiers wore coal-scuttle helmets. Beethoven was dragged into the Nazi era. It was my first exposure to the "concept" production of an opera, and it was the most moving performance of the opera that I have seen. This autobiographical note is to establish a disclaimer: I like a good concept and there is nothing wrong per se with a modern dress production of 18th or 19th century works.
But as Peter Hall, the British theatre director, once observed: "You don't confirm that Romeo and Juliet is about youth by putting Romeo and Tybalt on motor-bikes and dressing them in black leather. You are instead guilty of simplification." Hall is equally talented in drama and opera, but in my experience, most people's suspension of disbelief works at different levels in the two art forms so that, on the whole, theatre directors are more respectful-and consistent-in their treatment of both the work and the audience in Shakespeare than in, say, Verdi.
Why? Why does the opera director feel that he can get away with more exotic and irrational behaviour than his theatre colleagues? In the first place, there can be an element of distrust, or even dislike, of the audience. Faced with great blocks of corporate entertaining in the best seats and the often visible (and audible) somnolence of audiences after the dinner interval at Glyndebourne, you can understand, while not condone, such an attitude. But if you play silly egomaniacal games with a great opera, it is the composer who bears the brunt of the disrespect.
Peter Hall again: "In the last 50 years there has been a growing tendency to ignore the period in order to affirm the modern relevance of the piece... Specific periods have been neutered and made abstract, heroes have sung of swords while using pistols, Wotan (in the last Covent Garden Ring) became a lollipop-man brandishing a traffic warden's stick instead of a warrior with a spear. This was perfectly in tune with the world of Damien Hirst. It came out (like so much modern expressionism) as a piece of camp. Our period mocks the meaning rather than risk being thought over-serious." But opera doesn't have to be like that to be effective and entertaining to a modern audience facing yet another Tosca. Tosca is, in fact, a case in point. You can modernise it both interestingly, effectively and without distorting Puccini's intentions. Jonathan Miller's fascist updating at the English National Opera (ENO) of one of the most perfectly constructed operas ever written was appropriate and convincing. Yet probably the best Tosca I have ever seen, the one which set it out with the greatest clarity, the greatest fidelity to both Puccini and that cunning playwright, Victorien Sardou, was a Welsh National Opera (WNO) version with a decent, but not outstanding, cast on tour in Southampton. It was directed by Michael Blakemore, who is more usually found putting Michael Frayn's plays on stage. His singers were as well-drilled as any of his theatrical casts; every movement was appropriate to the music; the sets and costumes were accurately located in Rome in 1800; and an opera which I have seen 40 times appeared as new and as overpowering as ever.
Because of his entertainment value there is a quite unjustified snobbishness about Puccini which perhaps explains why revolutionary directors-Miller apart-cannot be bothered to do him at all, let alone mess him about. This is not the case with composers of loftier repute such as Mozart, Handel, Strauss, Verdi or Janacek.
One cannot write about wilful directors without invoking Peter Sellars and his famous Magic Flute at Glyndebourne, set in 1950s California. It was, in most people's view, irredeemably wicked, because he cut all the spoken dialogue on which depend continuity and comprehension of the action. Sellars is probably right for some contemporary works, such as John Adams's Nixon in China, where he works with the good will of composer, librettist and designer to create something which is both cohesive and logical. Yet his Theodora at Glyndebourne was far worse than his Magic Flute. One can argue that because it is an oratorio, and not one of Handel's great operas, it is fair game. But the story is so moving that it is certainly worth staging and the level of musical performance at Glyndebourne was flawless. But how that chorus must have suffered, with the primitive gesturing to underline the meaning of the words which Sellars forced upon them. It reminded me of the pathetic little mimes we used to do when I was at nursery school.
But Sellars's pi?ce de r?sistance was the execution scene in a work about cruel tyrants and early Christians in Roman times. The victim was put to death in public with the full panoply of a procession, followed by attachment to the execution bed with massive leather straps before receiving a lethal injection and dying with his arms spread out so that his body is cruciform. (Geddit?)
The whole scene was, more or less, frame shot for frame shot, like the execution at the end of Hollywood's most recent anti-capital punishment movie, Dead Man Walking (not a bad film, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn). It was as close as it could be while still keeping time with the music. There is nothing wrong with lifting one medium to illuminate another. Think of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now as an act of homage to Heart of Darkness. But Coppola, far from failing to acknowledge Conrad, gloried in his source and wrote about it. As far as I recall, Sellars gave no acknowledgement to the film, doubtless assuming that English opera critics, and the average Glyndebourne patron, do not go to the cinema. Only one reviewer of the production mentioned the borrowing (and that was because I saw Theodora in the company of his newspaper's theatre critic, who passed on the information). What really counted was neither Handel nor the efforts of the Glyndebourne musical team at their best, but Sellars's egregious "look at me" cleverness. It reminded me of the photographs of Annie Leibovitz. Leibovitz often manipulates her sitters into humiliating postures so that they become her victims (albeit apparently willing), rather than her subjects. We are not meant to admire the subject, but instead marvel at the cleverness of the photographer.
In England perhaps the most celebrated concept-certainly the most performed-is the ENO Rigoletto. Jonathan Miller's mafia Verdi is a stroke of genius. Everything that Verdi wrote about-the abuse of power, the sadistic mockery of good men by brutal underlings, the tenderness of father-daughter love-every nuance of this wonderful opera is faithfully represented in Miller's ingenious placing of an eternal tale. Similarly, in his "Armani" Cos? the new setting works perfectly. When the male lovers come on stage in UN uniforms, or are revived with electric heart starters instead of smelling salts, it all remains apposite for the elaborate games Mozart plays with the eternal verities of love and lust, fidelity and betrayal, disguise and revelation.
Cos? is a good test of a director's skill and his relationship with an audience. Graham Vick's recent version at Glyndebourne was, with its bare setting in a rehearsal room, a singularly lucid reading of a deceptively complex opera. On the other hand, putting glorious but rather amply-built sopranos into jeans did not advance matters one iota, and making singers perform seriously difficult music while rolling about on the floor, was an aberration. Why do world-class singers put up with it?
At times irrelevance is more than irritating and becomes a serious distraction. A few years ago David Freeman, whose Opera Factory has often presented classic operas in inventive and stimulating new forms-such as The Magic Flute set in a circus ring-went too far in his Don Giovanni at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. He made Elvira take a bath on stage. As usual with Freeman, who prefers good looking singers, Elvira was a very handsome woman and, with the rest of the heterosexual men in the audience, I found it impossible to concentrate on Mozart as Elvira's maid raised her ewer and sent a stream of water cascading over her mistress's naked and very splendid breasts. Perhaps it is churlish, even ungrateful, to complain about so delightful a spectacle, but this was Mozart's greatest opera and not the Folies Berg?res.
It is particularly annoying when a superb musical performance is let down by an arrogant production. Katie Mitchell's WNO Jenufa last autumn is a case in point. This tale of 19th century Moravian peasants was placed in 1930s suburbia with Parker-Knoll type armchairs, electric bar fire and cloche hats. The two young men in the opera were heroically sung by two burly, middle-aged, balding tenors who were, absurdly, denied wigs and proper make-up. Worst of all, Mitchell grafts a scene of her own on to the end. This is an outrage to Janacek, who provided a far more moving ending of his own.
The most recent example of a concept going wrong is the ENO Otello directed by David Freeman, set in a contemporary military base. There is nothing wrong in principle with a 20th century Otello-the recent National Theatre modern dress version worked well. What ruins the ENO version is the sloppy nature of the re-setting. Soldiers do not handle lethal, possibly nuclear, explosives while drinking and smoking. And too many Freeman inventions did not work. The Venetian ambassador turns up in a smart suit, with dark hair and heavy spectacles, looking familiar. You miss a few bars of the great music while you work out who it could be. Then, with heavy heart, you realise it is meant to be Gerry Adams.
How have opera directors established such absolute power? They make singers perform against the grain of their parts. They use designers who, even without the usual excuse of budget restraints, rejoice in fearless drabness. They play fast and loose with time and logic. They insult the intelligence of audiences who are not all critics with free seats or corporate guests, but people who have paid significant sums of money to see a great piece of musical drama, whether it is the solicitor in the stalls or the student in the gallery.
It has been suggested, during the closure of the Royal Opera House, that concert performances of opera should replace fully staged versions more often than is now the case. I have nothing against concert performances. Some of them have been memorable. Gergiev's The Legend of The Invisible City of Kitezh at the Barbican; Bernard Haitink's Mefistofele and Colin Davis's all-day The Trojans at the same venue; the Solti and Rattle Cos?s at the Festival Hall; Andrew Davis's handling of Berg's Lulu in the same hall, with the incomparable Patricia Wise. But they are an alternative to, not a substitute for, a properly staged production.
Whatever happened to the power of the intendant? Why does the boss not intervene to prevent cock-ups or take steps to lessen the damage once a production is under way? The public cannot always vote with their feet because they may have paid for something dreadful in advance, on the reputation of singers or conductor. This is why we need tougher intendants: men and women of iron who know about opera, whose power is greater than that of individual directors, and who are prepared to use it.
No one wants monsters in charge-like Kovarovic in Prague in the early part of this century, who cut and rewrote operas by Janacek and Dvorak. But wouldn't it be splendid if, next time someone wants to set The Marriage of Figaro in a hot air balloon over Antarctica, the intendant were simply to say: "No, that's stupid. It won't work. Try again."
