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.
Alex Henry: Tosca in Times Square, or, the Piazza di Nuova York
Having gone just to witness the scene, I stayed for the second and third acts, foraging for some pizza and Pellegrino at one of the intermissions to complete the Italian effect.
David Finkle: Peter Gelb and His Met: No Booing Please
What occurs to me about the booing is that it might begin to color attitudes towards the Met under Peter Gelb for whom this 2009-10 season is the first with no vestigial ties to Joseph Volpe.
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
I saw Luc Bondy’s production of Tosca over the holidays on PBS. Yes, there was some artistic license taken in the acting, set design and costumes, but this is what a new interpretation is all about--breathing new life into a work. This coupled with the artistry of the musicians made for a mesmerizing performance. A work of art presented in a new light can invigorate the art form, teach us much, and engage new audiences. I suspect Mr. Puccini would agree.
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.
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.
Do you want real responses? Or polite applause - and a permanently alienated audience?
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.
It was stupid then, and it's stupid now. The Rite of Spring is a masterpiece of music. That audience was foolish.
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.
Kaiser assumes that people were booing because the producer had a "fresh perspective". Perhaps they were booing cause it was really bad.
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.
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.