Lydia’s Blog

Today my main homo, Toby, brought around the latest issue of Opernglas, Germany’s second most influential trade magazine for opera (yes, there is a first, third and even fourth…). In it was an interview with an old friend I’d first met at Wolf Trap some six or seven years ago, who’s now making his way as a Bel Canto tenor in Europe.

Opernglas asked this friend of mine what he thought about the European style of opera staging, which is known in the U.S. as “eurotrash”. To his credit, he offered a very humorous, off-the-cuff and most importantly diplomatic and non-binding answer to the question.

Jesus. If the European operatic aesthetic can be bottled into the one word “eurotrash”, then its American counterpoint should also certianly receive an equally ignorant and derogatory title. I propose “anachroshit”.

Anyway. Although I strongly admire and defend European opera directors’ right to experiment with the form on any and all levels, there are certainly occasions when said experiments end up, let’s say, more successful than at other times.

After perusing Gay Romeo for an hour or so, Toby and I went to a performance of a large Italian-romantic spectacular at Berlin’s most prestigious opera house, which had been directed by a friend of ours (It premiered last September, this was the first remount).

First, I should say that the production had great moments. Goosebumps moments. Nearly every scene that didn’t feature the lead tenor held the possibility of greatness, it should definitely be said.

Before I go further with any criticism, I must say how grateful I was to this production for not abusing chilcheed symbols of American “imperial” power, in order to represent the antagonist. It’s been the trend of the 2005-2006 season, featuring prominently in two shows I’ve assistant directed this season, and infecting nearly every other new production I’ve seen this year. It’s actually been pretty wild. Tyrants from Metastasio to Mozart to Maderna in Cowboy hats and boots, fatigues, grass skirts, Chevy trucks, on mechanical bulls, and nearly always either wrapped in- or waving around an American Flag.

In light of that interview and tonight’s performance, I feel the need to educate both potential purveyors of Eurotrash and Anachroshit on what I condider to be a few ground rules when it comes to staging an opera in either Europe or America. These are not only a reaction to what I saw tonight, but to what I have been seeing over the last seasons in Europe (in other words, what America might see in it’s regional opera houses in thirty years or so…)

Here it is. Lyd’s deadly S’s…

STROBES: Please do not substitute a strobe light for an actual visual idea that co-ordinates with a climactic moment. That includes scenes depicting war, storms, earthquakes, etc.

SEX: No matter how talented they are, a soprano and tenor trying to simulate penetrative sex while hitting high Cs will only end up looking silly. Also by and large, opera singers are not very sexy. Nobody would even really want to see it, even were the pair in question to make it even slightly believable.

SPLITTING: This is the practice by which two singers, embroiled in a particularly dramatic face-to-face moment at center stage, suddenly split out to mid-down-stage-right and mid-down-stage-left in order to blankly decry whatever emotion they’re supposed to be expressing directly to the audience. Please try to prevent this, as it is unspeakably lame.

SLAPPING: Either convince your singers to actually slap each other to the full extent of their strength (which is actually possible, and uncannily satisfying), or make some ironic visual comment about the fact that they can’t, or just aren’t. Keep in mind that opera singers are constitutionally unable to master naps (faked whacks, claps and the like that accompany standard “stage” combat).

STABBING: If your props guy can crank out a sweet trick, you’re golden. Otherwise, think of something else.

SWORDFIGHTING: Forget it.

STARING: Please do not, in the absence of any cleverer dramatic ideas for a particularly declamatory choral moment, instruct your chorus to stand as far downstage as possible, staring into the audience looking “forceful”. This will always prove weak. Doubly so if you decide to raise the house lights at the same time.

STUFFED ANIMALS (also dolls, small 3D likenesses, etc.): Should be used either with intentional humor or extraordinary cruelty and crassness–and certainly with a great deal of technical precision. This can also be readily applied to the use of masks, prosthetic limbs, and comprimario tenors.