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Stephen Barber's review of the new Netopil "Der Freischütz" DVD
Posted by Ralph Moore on March 14, 2022, 10:43 pm Edited by board administrator March 15, 2022, 9:31 am
I enjoyed his scathing but clearly knowledgeable and perfectly well reasoned dismantling of that farce and wonder how much longer opera audiences will tolerate and have to endure the tyranny of puerile Regietheater directors who simply cannot sufficiently trust the appeal of a work to present it as the composer intended, but must instead obsessively impose wholly inappropriate, modish, "look-at-me concepts" on the work in question.
It is bad enough that the number of voices able to do justice to the greatest operas is in decline without such shenanigans nullifying what little pleasure remains in the art form as a spectacle. This is why I have almost given up going to the opera unless I am assured of a cast and production which respect the music.