Why All the Booing?

I was fortunate to be invited to the opening of the Metropolitan Opera two weeks ago. The new production of Tosca made news when the production team was greeted by a chorus of boos when they bowed at the end of the performance.

I was surprised not so much by the boos as by the press coverage. Over the past thirty years of opera-going, I have seen many new, adventurous productions greeted by jeers when they debut. (Who can forget the reaction to Sir Peter Hall's Macbeth at the Met in 1982?)

For some reason, when directors approach favorite operas with a fresh perspective, audiences get angry. Perhaps it is the high ticket prices. Perhaps it is the fear that this new approach will become the norm and all opera productions will be similarly challenging. Perhaps it is the fear that this is the last production of the opera one will ever see.

I am fortunate to be able to see many opera productions, so perhaps I do not represent the average audience member. But I, for one, enjoy when a director takes a new approach to a work, as long as it is faithful to the music and makes sense.

When I ran the Royal Opera House, we created a new production of Tristan und Isolde that was very unusual. Tristan and Isolde each 'lived' on a boat that glided across a clear black (plexiglass) sea. They lived in their own worlds and never touched. I thought the director, Herbert Wernicke, had a beautiful concept. The production was not as well sung as I would have liked; I felt this undercut the director's concept. I expected negative reaction to the singing; the press, however, took after the production. One journalist called it "the lowest point in the history of the Royal Opera House." Wow.

I enjoy a beautiful, highly realistic production (pace Franco Zeffirelli). But I also enjoy a high concept production when it is executed well; they force me to examine the opera in a new way.

There was much to like in Luc Bondy's production of Tosca. Though ultimately I did not find it entirely persuasive, I particularly enjoyed the way the production put the relationships between the three principles in the spotlight. I believe Peter Gelb is doing what must be done by engaging important directors to create new productions; no performing arts organization can survive simply as a museum for beloved productions. And it takes courage to present a new production that is clearly going to be controversial on opening night.

But even if one did not enjoy this production, and even if one felt angry, booing seems to be an overreaction. Making art is about taking risk. Embarrassing serious artists when they are taking important risks seems hardly a smart approach that will foster additional experimentation. Next time you don't like a production, go home and write a blog.

Comments

[ConstitutionFirst]

HighBrow response: Many artists like to say that they want to "create a reaction in their audience." If we, as the audience, refuse to give an honest reaction then we have failed in our half of the mutual effort that is art.

Scientific response: If indeed they are experimenting, then we must provide them with accurate data on which to base further experimentation

Programmer's response: Garbage cheered = Garbage produced

Consumer's response: This isn't what I paid for

Quipster's response: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I won't be holdin' that over for an extended run

[RandomMandarin]

It couldn't possibly have anything at all, at all, to do with America reverting into an asylum of troglodytes.

[NYCexile]

What an amazing display of arrogance!

These productions get rightly booed whenever the set designer or director starts to think that 'their' artistry outweighs the work being performed. You want to stage some avant-garde version of Tosca or Tristan u. Isolde? Then compose an opera of the same quality, and then you can bugger it up to your heart's content.

Until then, you need to remember that Puccini, Wagner, et alia, belong to all of us, and very few opera lovers are so bereft of imagination that some off the wall staging is anything other than an unwelcome distraction.

Even Carmen Jones was presented as film entertainment, not as opera, and that was one of the best adaptations ever.

[LadyXoc]

Booing is early warning. Later, people just stop buying tickets. Innovation is only good if it's good innovation.
I did see that Tosca. The actions on stage were not only vulgar, but extremely improbable. The scenery was minimal and ugly at the same time. We will not dwell on the singing, except to say that the house had run out of rehersed villains, and had to have one sing from score at the side of the stage while the vocally incapacitated principal lip-synched through the aforementioned vulgar and improbable stage directions. I didn't stay long enough to boo.

[userw014]

There's plenty of space for experimentation. But wouldn't it be more honest to have called it "variations on a theme"? Or was the director afraid it would be ignored?

Do you want real responses? Or polite applause - and a permanently alienated audience?

[superstition]

If people want to register their disapproval in a more polite manner, they can quietly leave. Booing is obnoxious and arrogant. It's an insult to the people who work hard to present a piece of art. People don't have to like art and it doesn't have to be a commercial success. But, people should have some decency toward others. It's indecent to boo someone who is performing.

[ConstitutionFirst]

Booing is no more disruptive tham applauding. Both are centuries old, and expected, responses from the audience to the performers. They are part of what makes live theater a unique experience different from the movies.

[Cour]

Kaiser ought to practise what he preaches: the Kennedy Center's programming is perpetually conservative and staid.

[ramper]

Why are they booing? Maybe it's because they feel they are not getting what they paid for or the product was not worth the prices. Should not be hard to understand.

[classicalgeek]

Booing (and other more demonstrative forms of disapproval) have a long tradition in opera. Remember, Parisians rioted in the streets over Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and tore up the theatre.

Bondy is lucky no-one challenged him to a duel--another time-honored traditional way of settling differences of artistic opinion in the operatic world. Perhaps our society has become a bit too civilized when booing is frowned upon. Art is supposed to inflame the passions, especially opera, so I don't understand why people are surprised when it succeeds.

[superstition]

"Remember, Parisians rioted in the streets over Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and tore up the theatre."

It was stupid then, and it's stupid now. The Rite of Spring is a masterpiece of music. That audience was foolish.

[JustThisGuy]

If you take a risk, you need to understand that you are.

You can freely make art for yourself, and take risks and no one will judge you and it.

If you present to an audiance, you are asking to be judged. Risking the boos of the audiance is the only way to also get honest ovations.

You can get my symathy or my opinion, but you can not get both at once. It may be that this particular audiance overreaced, or it could be that it was a bad concept.

[gbee]

All true, and what are you "risking" if you to preempt the audience's honest first reaction? Nothing. Who knows, maybe you will be vindicated over time, in which case, your art will be held in even higher regard as viewpoints change. As an artist, I always prefer an honest reaction to my work, good or bad, over pandering, or, God forbid, no reaction at all. It can be painful to endure, but is anything worthwhile ever pain free?

[BlackRabbit]

Well said. No risk, no glory.

Kaiser assumes that people were booing because the producer had a "fresh perspective". Perhaps they were booing cause it was really bad.

[duncan idaho2]

Audiences should have every right to boo artists.

Setting it up so that the composer and the performer are PROTECTED from being confronted by an audience loudly declaring their rejection does not help the artist or the performer at all.

Mr. Kaiser -- risk inherently entails the possibility of failure. Risks that pay off are rewarding all the more because of the possibility of humiliation if the outcome was failure. If performers and composers are confronted by the audience rejecting them in so public a fashion, then that is merely what these artists deserve. Otherwise, it's the audience who, in being forced to be polite when they're displeased, grows distant and hostile to the genre of music that attracted them in the first place.

[Dots]

Yes, it is the ticket prices. And the disclosure.
I want to prepare myself if I pay for a roast beef dinner and am served fish.
I have a right to that information.
"This is a new innovative approach by the Director ________"
Some innovative work I will travel miles to see, other innovative work makes me ill.