Although I have the Frederica von Stade cds of Cendrillon I haven't seen either of the productions you mention so can't comment on the staging but I would have thought that any production that missed out on the fairy-tale wonderment of the plot and the glamour of the ballroom-scene would be completely at variance with Massenet's wishes - however mindful I am of the fact that Johann Strauss was willing to have his ballet Aschenbrodel (which he didn't live to complete)set in a Viennese department store.
To have our operas or plays done exactly in the way the composer or author envisioned them in performance - clanking stage machinery, lighting by candlelight, the claque occupying parts of the theatre - is of course not possible or desirable today and I feel sure that many composers would have been delighted to take advantage of the technical opportunities afforded by later ages. I feel confident that Wagner wouldn't have objected to the projection of film on to the scenery-as I've seen in a number of productions - if it had been available to him.
What I object to is when stage designers, producers and all the extra-musical crew take over to such an extent that the original conception of the work as a dramatic presentation is barely recognisable and results in such absurdities as the gods of Valhalla striding about in dinner-jackets and twin set and pearls while carrying spears and other items from the dawn of time about their persons. I have a dvd of a really rather good, traditional-style Polish production
of Szymanowski's Hagith which shows however, in one scene a character entering in a modern wheelchair and, in another, somebody lighting a cigarette. I racked my brains to try to figure out what this could mean in the context of a centuries-old setting but the only explanation I could come up with is that, maybe, Szymanowski ruined his health by heavy smoking and needed to be conveyed in a wheelchair at the end of his life ! And this is one of the main troubles with these re-stagings/re-interpretations....they distract you from what should be the main business in hand of giving your full attention to the work of the composer/librettist or, at another level, the artists' interpretation. It's annoying enough when such treatment is given to a well-known piece by Verdi or Wagner but when something little-known like Schumann's Genoveva is subject to it, it's infuriating.
Just to put my quoted remarks in context a little.
1. When I wrote the cited paragraphs, I was writing about changes "in the last seven decades," i.e. since the late 1950s (when I began operagoing). Whether these changes have continued to progress in the last 20-25 years I couldn't say.
2. I was speaking about "historically informed stagings (i.e., stagings in the manner that the composer would have envisaged)." At least as used in MWI reviews, "traditional" tends to be a broader term, encompassing just about anything in period costume.
Compare the recent Joyce DiDonato Covent Garden Massenet Cendrillon with the 1970s Canadian telecast with Frederica von Stade. Both have been called "traditional," but one ventures much further from anything Massenet would have anticipated than the other.
Or consider the 2017 revival of Karajan's 1967 Salzburg Easter Walküre . The sets and costumes are exactly the same, but the stage action is very different, and much further from Wagner's script (not that Karajan had adhered minutely to it in the first place!).
Jeffrey's comments are, as always, fascinating, and raise all kinds of thoughts. I don't know how true this is, but I've often seen it said that older operagoers tend to prefer historically informed stagings, whereas younger ones are more likely to be attracted by contemporary Regietheater. (Of course there are exceptions in both directions.)
Message Thread | This response ↓
« Back to index | View thread »
Thank you for taking part in the MusicWeb International Forum.
Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb