Seattle Seahawks V Met’

Have you ever booed a stage production or walked out of the performance altogether? Here in Seattle, I am told that audiences award each performance a standing ovation then quickly scuttle home. (Fair play to them, most people who rush out are trying to catch a late night ferry home.) I myself tend towards a binary approach – I either enjoy it or not then scuttle home.

But there are stirrings amongst opera audiences. Are they becoming as demonstrative as football supporters? Or are they still politely applauding opera stage production they simply do not enjoy?

My limit was reached when I saw a hideous production of Götterdämmerung in Florence some time ago.

Anticipating an awful production, I had booked a box seat above the orchestra from which I could hear that great sound and see Zubin Mehta leaning back against the pit wall conducting his orchestra in his inimitable way. But I was puzzled by the fact that there was a video monitor hanging at my level. All was revealed when three enormous glass tanks appeared suspended above the stage at my level containing the Rheintöchtern. They looked at us from under the water and rose above the surface to sing their parts!

At the time I was more concerned at the cruelty inflicted on these young singers than the quality of the production. I’m OK with naked Rheintöchtern or Rheintöchtern flying on wires behind a gauze but underwater goes too far in my opinion. But when Siegfried appeared walking along the top of the set, I was concerned about the safety of the whole cast. If animals were required to do anything like this, the show would be immediately banned.

When the performance ended with all sorts of antics including a sort of cirque de soleil and segways running around everywhere I threw up my hands and shut my eyes. I did open them to applaud  a great Brünnhilde who had put up with being carted around on a forklift truck during the performance.

Then there are those slightly weird productions. The ‘Lohengrin I heard some time ago in Munich probably qualifies as one of those. But with Kent Nagano at the helm and local Jonas Kaufmann singing Lohengrin, the audience was very happy.   It was the first time I had heard Kaufmann so I was also very happy!! This production is actually on Youtube so we can all make a judgement about the extent of the weirdness and the magic of the performance. Here they are busy building a house in the first act 29 minutes into this video . . . .

. . . . . . and here is the finished half house. Lohengrin is dressed Amish-style but this probably indicates the quality of his character . . . .

Magic as the music may be, I could not help wondering why they began building with hebel blocks and ended with a wooden Halbhaus.

I have tended to block out from my memory the most awful productions I have seen in recent years. I have tried to enjoy the great music alone. However, I have to admit that production does affect my feelings at the end of an opera evening. I feel particularly sorry for critics who have to attend these performances. Having paid off a mortgage by moonlighting as a music critic, I have always felt a need to support musicians and singers, many of whom have trained for up to twenty years before getting their first appointment.

I can easily sympathise with a particular critic who neglected to mention in his review three years ago that performances of the L.A. “Ring”, particularly the final “Götterdämmerung”, had been booed. In fact one other critic had written . . . . . .

“I have never heard anything close to the amount, volume, and ferocity of the booing following the April 3 premiere of Los Angeles Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung,”

This sort of observation was justified by my own editor who suggested that critics are journalists who should “say something about the whole performance”. Surely, the audience reaction is part of the “whole performance”?

Another observation by a critic in L.A. . . . . .

The director “jauntily jogged right to the front of the stage, smiling, as if to challenge both booers and the rising rival chorus of bravos . . . . . . The boo’s won.”

It is sad to read that Zeffirelli is recorded as saying  “I belong to a generation where being faithful to the authors was the automatic rule. Now you have to be unfaithful to be interesting.”

One argument that favours the “weird”  is the televising of operas which often gives a more favourable view of an “unfaithful” approach. The audience, on the other hand is looking at a wide stage. Even the ‘Lohengrin’ mentioned above looks rather scruffy during “In fernem Land”. The few shots of the whole stage in the video actually show this, although I obviously did not worry about it at the time!

Even a short search on the internet will reveal many occasions where audiences have become more intolerant of extremely “unfaithful” productions. For example, it is not surprising that the Met audience did not appreciate a scene in the 2009 production of ’Tosca’ “where the villain tries to become intimate with a statue of the Virgin Mary.”

There were many reactions from the press ranging from Bloomberg’s “How did this dopey show get on the stage?” to The New Yorker’s “Fiasco!!” The director was subsequently effectively sacked and his proposed production of Rigoletto was rejected in favour of a new director whose . . . . .

“ transformation of Verdi’s tragic opera from the ducal palace in Mantua, circa 1600, to a Las Vegas casino, circa 1960, is no less spectacular (or eye-rolling, depending on one’s tolerance for the unorthodox) . . . . . but once one adjusts to the myriad flashing neon signs in the opening act, including a bare-bottomed stripper and a bubbling champagne glass, the music of one of Verdi’s most popular operas takes over.”

Once again, faithfulness, the musicians and singers have won the day!

Last year, a Covent Garden audience felt their evening watching ‘Rusalka’ had been ruined by the fact that director had set the opera in a brothel. They booed the director and felt that perhaps, like the Met’, the management should notice their reaction?

So what has happened as a reaction to this booing?

Let’s look at the good stuff first. Two months ago, I read about the Pittsburgh Opera where . . . . .

“The Triumphal Scene featured many extra elements, including two horses ridden by members of the Allegheny Country Police Mounted Patrol, a python, a hawk, and four greyhounds with their handlers.”

But they also brought figures from the USA’s  iconic sport which must help to bring opera to the people without any unfaithfulness or cruelty to sopranos. I personally love this!!

“Former Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch was the “Champion of Champions” on Saturday. He comported himself with dignity and exchanged salutes with Radames. Bob Friend, Franco Harris and Phil Bourge will take this silent role at subsequent performances.”

However this year in Bayreuth, known for its imaginative productions, ‘Götterdämmerung’ was booed for 15 minutes. Maybe Shirley Apthorp’s description explains why . . .

“This is Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, where two giant crocodiles lumber past overflowing rubbish bins during Siegfried’s love duet with Brünnhilde. One of them swallows the Waldvogel – her high heels can be seen kicking feebly between its teeth as the two sing on. Earlier, when Siegfried blasted Mime full of holes with a machine gun, a member of the public collapsed. Hagen and Günter run a kebab stand in a forgotten corner of East Berlin. . . . . . . For these and a thousand other petty provocations, the Bayreuth audience rewarded the stage director with more than 15 minutes of solid booing when he appeared for his curtain call”.

This was the bicentenary performance of the ‘Ring’, no less!! It was noted that

“The director seemed determined to stick it out, standing on stage for a good 10 minutes, bowing graciously and making thumbs-up gestures. He even returned for a second helping and appeared to be revelling in the scandal, pointing at his watch to suggest he had time to listen to it.”

But there’s even more distasteful stuff. The “thousand other petty provocations” included. the scene where

“Two disheveled gods, Wotan and Erda, eat pasta and tomato sauce and indulge in joyless” indescribable acts . . . and . . .  “Brünnhilde goes to sleep in Baku, Azerbaijan, and awakes in a socialist utopia Mount Rushmore with the faces of Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Mao carved into the rock.”

Two months ago in Paris, audiences booed the production of ‘Aida’. How on earth can anyone boo ‘Aida’? Perhaps the appearance of gypsies, military police, tanks and Gestapo officers with machine guns in the Italian Risorgimento had something to do with it?

What next?

Having just witnessed the Seahawks defeat the Giants away from home 23 to zip in New Jersey – poetry in motion, especially slow motion!! (I was watching in a bar eating an enormous prime rib sandwich and drinking a pint of Guiness), I would suggest that opera companies go even further than Pittsburgh and hire Pete Caroll to direct their next productions.