# Can we still have traditional staging of operas, which contain features of "exoticism" ?



## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

People, don't take me wrong, I sometimes enjoy creative, non/traditional staging of opera. I can be fresh and fun. But... Right now, in London, they are staging Samson and Dellilah by Saint Saens. The temple of the pagan god Dagon is replaced by gambling machines etc. I haven't seen it, it might be nice. However, what really made me depressed - a musical journalist saying, that the traditional staging is _out of question_ now, because it might offend people.

The opera was composed at the time, when European musicians were fascinated by exotic music and looked for the excuses to imitate foreign musical keys, use non-european musical instruments etc. So, in *Samson and Dellilah*, the Hebrews are the good guys, who get the music resembling Bach and Haendel. The bad guys are Phillistines, and they get music imitating the tunes and keys, which Saint Saens heard on his travels to Morocco. People fear, this might suggest or induce hostility between Western and Arabic countries, so they are at least trying not to reniforce these elements by sets and costumes.

Do you know, if the traditional staging, like at MET in 2018 really offended anybody ? (I loved it). See the photo here for illustration: https://i0.wp.com/www.arts-ny.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Samson-et-Dalila-MetOpera-scene-2500.jpg?resize=768,533&ssl=1

Is this really the end of traditional staging for operas plaqued by orientalism and exoticism ? There are more operas in this cathegory. The most notable example is Madamma Butterfly, but Japanese people seem to have accepted it, after some surprise about the misconceptions of their culture.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

I, for one, don’t like updating an opera’s timeline (like the recent Metropolitan Opera *Lucia di Lammermoor*) and *Samson et Dalila *would be totally spoiled if they wore street wear. It’d look like a rehearsal. The production you describe seems to follow the previous Metropolitan production of *Rigoletto *that takes place in Las Vegas.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I have largely stopped going to opera for this very reason. Like it or not, great opera was conceived by the composer with a certain staging in mind and I believe that stage directors who don't respect that are like vandals. The last Ring I saw was in Seattle: magnificent. The realism in the stage settings of the forests and mountains was breathtaking and added so much to the production. Euro-trash staging turns off a lot of people and It's why I have no interest in going to Bayreuth.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

The stated reason for avoiding traditional staging in Samson and Dellilah is not to offend people with non-western roots.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

BBSVK said:


> The stated reason for avoiding traditional staging in Samson and Dellilah is not to offend people with non-western roots.


Who in particular, and why should it?


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

elgar's ghost said:


> Who in particular, and why should it?


It happens in Gaza, Israelites are the good guys, they are associated with the Christian world through musical similarities with Bach. Their opponents, the Philistines, are the bad guys, they get the music resembling the cultural heritage of currently Islamic countries. (MET study materials suggest to look at similarities with Lebanese music, for instance). The Philistines in the third act ridicule and humiliate Samson, an already tortured and desperate hero who had been blinded. The Philistines also celebrate with "dance bacchanale", basically a ballet depicting an orgy.

But in the broader sense, all this operatic exoticism on overall is portraying the other cultures without an accurate knowledge of them, yet in some sense inferior, women dying to sleep with men of western type etc.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Seems to me that the eggshell-treading apologists are taking it upon themselves to be offended on behalf of those who don't seem to care a damn one way or the other. God, what a world...


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## gsdkfasdf (11 mo ago)

I think people read too much into everything. It's also really funny that they'd only get offended on behalf of certain groups.

Good music is good music. I've never heard of anyone being offended by the Met production, but I sure as hell have seen people try to get offended on behalf of other people. Opera isn't meant to be a reflection of reality (and same with other fictional works really) and people who act like fiction has to be morally correct and studied from blindly are just silly. It can be frustrating but that's not a reason to assume that readers/listeners all lack critical thinking skills to discern when a work is playing upon stereotypes. 


--

I prefer a lot of the traditional productions, and they're usually more aesthetically pleasing. The blunt way to say this is that many modern productions look cheap and are massively confusing. The Theater an der Wien Tosca? I still have no idea what was going on, and they absolutely murdered _vissi d'arte_. Not to mention that in the first act we already have [trigger warning] a dismembered torso?


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

BBSVK’s rhetorical question is unfortunately tautological, given the experience of going to the opera (aka, a geriatrics ward) is itself now exotic!


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)




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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Ludwig Schon said:


> BBSVK’s rhetorical question is unfortunately tautological, given the experience of going to the opera (aka, a geriatrics ward) is itself now exotic!


I know what mathematical tautology is, but I don't understand your response. 

The young people might as well be attracted by traditional staging, the same target group which likes Harry Potter. 

But I am not debating the right of innovative "regietheater" to exist. Rather, if we are really _completely_ abandoning the traditional staging in the operas, which are problematic.

Exoticism (or Orientalism) is meant as technical term here - the operas of 19-th century, when several composers at once were keen on depicting non- European cultures, without much knowledge, made them look somewhat inferior or Barbaric. And it was reinforced by exotic instruments, combination of tones etc.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I think the fear to offend is often exaggerated nowadays. (Apart from the fact that one central point of many modern stagings is exactly to offend traditionalists.) It seems also that orientalism/exoticism is not simply depicting non-Europeans as barbaric; there is also the attraction (that's why Samson fell for Delilah ) of the exotic, sometimes luxury and decadent debauchery etc. (It's also very normal, just look into Greeks about Persians, Tacitus about the ancient Germanic tribes or into medieval Arab or Chinese sources about "barbarians". With all their arrogance, it is probably hard to find any people that were more fascinated by and interested in foreign cultures than 19th century colonialist Europeans.)
In the case of Samson it should be sufficient to explain that the Philistines obviously predated both the conflict Islam-Xianity and colonialism by more than a millenium. We know very little about them (sea peoples), apparently they either quickly took over some cults of the semitic levante people or whatever gods they had were similarly abonimable to the ancient Israelites.


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> I know what mathematical tautology is, but I don't understand your response.
> 
> The young people might as well be attracted by traditional staging, the same target group which likes Harry Potter.
> 
> ...


A tautology is simply saying the same thing twice using different words. My point was that opera is itself now “exotic”, so whether it uses orientalist mise-en-scene or not is neither here nor there, as the whole experience is exotic.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Ludwig Schon said:


> A tautology is simply saying the same thing twice using different words. My point was that opera is itself now “exotic”, so whether it uses orientalist mise-en-scene or not is neither here nor there, as the whole experience is exotic.


Sure, I expect opera to be "stupid" in one way or the other. That is the part of what I love about it.

My question was not purely rhetorical. Maybe my naivité and panic played a role, but I have heard it said with such great conviction, that we are abandoning these "bad manners" now. It might be exaggerated, yes.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I always have a question to opera directors and intendants who encourage them. Why classical art should be guilty? Why are they afraid of offending an abstract group of individuals who were unlikely to go to the opera at all, and are not afraid of offending their constant audience? 
Samson and Dalilah which I attend sometimes in my opera house lacks any kind of oriental but contains inevitable nazis or something like that. Bacchanalia is a BDSM-party, only in costumes, no flagellation and other stuff. And what's interesting? It doesn't even surprise for the first time and you don't notice all this in following performances.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I'd say that the fact that the MET had a traditional staging of Samson & Delilah as recently as 2018 shows that these will not disappear. The tendency to modern/provocative stagings seems to me independent of this. In fact, these might become "milder" because of similar fears to offend. I think one has to keep in mind that the relevant public is less the general audience but high profile critics/reviewers and maybe some academics. They are the ones who'd both be offended by "orientalism" of the wrong kind and be delighted by the provocations of the proper kind. 
(I recently saw a review of a Madama Butterfly staging that was praised for countering the obvious colonialist/exotist tropes, not sure how they did this without changing the whole thing...)


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> Sure, I expect opera to be "stupid" in one way or the other. That is the part of what I love about it.
> 
> My question was not purely rhetorical. Maybe my naivité and panic played a role, but I have heard it said with such great conviction, that we are abandoning these "bad manners" now. It might be exaggerated, yes.


I certainly did not say nor do I believe that opera is “stupid”. However, it is nevertheless indirectly exclusionary, given the money and cultural capital needed to enjoy an evening at the ROH.

A truly “exotic” Wagner experience for Lil Ludi, would be one where the cast actually wear costumes akin to those within the era in which the opera is set, rather than everyone dressing up like Nazis in a post nuclear-holocaust state of nature…


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

We are to worry about a fictionalized presentation of an ancient culture in an opera based on a fictional tale of a man who has strong muscles because of his _hair?_

Maybe they could stage it as a commercial for Rogaine.


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

ColdGenius said:


> I always have a question to opera directors and intendants who encourage them. Why classical art should be guilty? Why are they afraid of offending an abstract group of individuals who were unlikely to go to the opera at all, and are not afraid of offending their constant audience?
> Samson and Dalilah which I attend sometimes in my opera house lacks any kind of oriental but contains inevitable nazis or something like that. Bacchanalia is a BDSM-party, only in costumes, no flagellation and other stuff. And what's interesting? It doesn't even surprise for the first time and you don't notice all this in following performances.


Achtung, Surrender!

How funny that we both serendipitously committed Godwin’s Law at the exact same moment…


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> We are to worry about a fictionalized presentation of an ancient culture in an opera based on a fictional tale of a man who has strong muscles because of his _hair?_


The last feature is unlikely to offend anyone, I guess.
And it's of course not about the Philistines 3000 years ago but the 19th century exoticism of the actual opera that is for modern critics connected with atrocities of colonialism or more likely with general western arrogance towards non-western cultures.

As I said, something like gambling machines instead of a Fish-god temple could have been done 30 years ago already when people were more concerned about offending in the right way, namely the staid wardens of tradition, by certain stagings than about not offending postcolonial wardens of PC.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Kreisler jr said:


> And it's of course not about the Philistines 3000 years ago but the 19th century exoticism of the actual opera that is for modern critics connected with atrocities of colonialism or more likely with general western arrogance towards non-western cultures.


True, the exoticism is really the point. It's a fine period piece, an extended confection in costume, and should be presented as such. It's perverse to take it as a serious representation of anything.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

BBSVK said:


> I know what mathematical tautology is, but I don't understand your response.
> 
> The young people might as well be attracted by traditional staging, the same target group which likes Harry Potter.
> 
> ...


I have underlined an important caveat here. I think the important thing is that oriental characters who are important to the plot need to be conceived as human and understandable. Where this cannot happen the fault would seem to be with the work. As mere drama it would not survive but with opera we can get a lot of confusion: the music can be great even when the action is hackneyed. I personally do not think art that offends whole nations should be performed - hence the need to rescue it. I'm no fan of gimmicky opera stagings, however.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Enthusiast said:


> I have underlined an important caveat here. I think the important thing is that oriental characters who are important to the plot need to be conceived as human and understandable. Where this cannot happen the fault would seem to be with the work. As mere drama it would not survive but with opera we can get a lot of confusion: the music can be great even when the action is hackneyed. I personally do not think art that offends whole nations should be performed - hence the need to rescue it. I'm no fan of gimmicky opera stagings, however.


So, Dellilah is the most important character in the whole opera. She has loved Samson before the opera started, but he abandoned her. So she starts as a scorned woman to begin with. Later, she sees Samson fighting her compatriots and winning. The Hebrews destroy the harvest, which somehow most people do not notice while watching the opera, but I wonder what Geneva convention is saying about this. It will mean the death of civilians, including children, in the long run, although nobody seems to dwell on this little point. So Dellilah is ready for revenge, through seduction, which flows quite easily, because she can still remember her genuine feelings for Samson. And maybe she still desires him on some level. Additionally, in the last act, the MET production makes Elina Garanča show regret, that her revenge perhaps went too far. She keeps looking aside, covering her mouth or face. She sings all the nasty things which are in the libretto, she parodies her previous love song to further taunt Samson, but needs to take a large sip of alcohol each time before she says/sings something. Is this enough to make the MET production OK ?​


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Well, Garanca is no stranger to directors' quirks. She can sing properly climbing the pile of chairs, for example.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> So, Dellilah is the most important character in the whole opera. She has loved Samson before the opera started, but he abandoned her. So she starts as a scorned woman to begin with. Later, she sees Samson fighting her compatriots and winning. The Hebrews destroy the harvest, which somehow most people do not notice while watching the opera, but I wonder what Geneva convention is saying about this. It will mean the death of civilians, including children, in the long run, although nobody seems to dwell on this little point.​


There are many controversies in the source, as in any argue about whose God is more effective. 
Besides Samson is a kind of hero in it's mythological meaning, but from the Bible, thus he is a promising object for investigation of toxic masculinity. At first his people tryes to manage it (every army does so), then Dalilah uses it in more natural way. I wish the directors wouldn't cultivate this overactual agenda.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

ColdGenius said:


> Well, Garanca is no stranger to directors' quirks. She can sing properly climbing the pile of chairs, for example.


Where ?


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

La Favorite in Bayerische Oper several years ago.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

ColdGenius said:


> Besides Samson is a kind of hero in it's mythological meaning, but from the Bible, thus he is a promising object for investigation of toxic masculinity.


He is a macho in the Bible, but a softie in the opera.

EDIT: or at least less of a macho.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Maybe. Macho can be less cool than they think, it's nessesary to find his soft points. Even if he strangles lions (another metaphor, like power in hair). Or binding torches to jackal tails. Typical for machos in puberty cruelty to those who can't respond.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

BBSVK said:


> So, Dellilah is the most important character in the whole opera. She has loved Samson before the opera started, but he abandoned her. So she starts as a scorned woman to begin with. Later, she sees Samson fighting her compatriots and winning. The Hebrews destroy the harvest, which somehow most people do not notice while watching the opera, but I wonder what Geneva convention is saying about this. It will mean the death of civilians, including children, in the long run, although nobody seems to dwell on this little point. So Dellilah is ready for revenge, through seduction, which flows quite easily, because she can still remember her genuine feelings for Samson. And maybe she still desires him on some level. Additionally, in the last act, the MET production makes Elina Garanča show regret, that her revenge perhaps went too far. She keeps looking aside, covering her mouth or face. She sings all the nasty things which are in the libretto, she parodies her previous love song to further taunt Samson, but needs to take a large sip of alcohol each time before she says/sings something. Is this enough to make the MET production OK ?​


So it ought to be possible to portray Delilah as a wronged woman driven to revenge without recourse to anachronistic staging (whether it be bringing it into the modern world or referring to modern insights into war crimes)? Whether Saint-Saens' music and the libretto allow for this, though, is another question. I don't know the work (and don't come with a huge amount of respect for Saint-Seans) and from what I am reading here (mostly from its fans) it is more of a spectacle than an exploration of universal human feelings. I do think producers have a duty to avoid offending potential audiences and most especially to steer well clear of the real risks of cheering on modern day war crimes. The risks are real: it would be only too easy at this time to do this thing as a spectacle of goodies versus baddies where both groups are named as people who still exist and are still committing atrocities against each other. The Judaic vs Palestinian issue is a very hot one with a lot of real harm being caused. The piece may be OK but it is not if it gets presented as a rallying call for modern day war criminals. It's like Wagner - great composer of great operas - who got used to inspire horrific crimes.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> I personally do not think art that offends whole nations should be performed - hence the need to rescue it. I'm no fan of gimmicky opera stagings, however.


Can whole nations be offended? There will always be someone who's offended (by almost anything) and someone who will not.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

We are just discussing here that there are many points which could be offensive to anyone in almost every oeuvre. "Samson and Delilah" and the known question is only one example. Who would argue that the war is the most terrible thing that could happen to any nation or people, whatever noble mottos would it be accompanied by.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Enthusiast said:


> . I don't know the work (and don't come with a huge amount of respect for Saint-Seans)


If you don't like Saint Saens that much, whom do you like, or which opera is your favourite ? I am an amateur and I notice, that Samson and Dellilah does not trigger in me that insane adoration like Norma or Carmen do. However, the single most famous aria by Dellilah does trigger that quality of insanity in me.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Ironic that_ Samson et Dalila_ was composed while the Holy Land was still under Ottoman rule, yet I can't recall reading anywhere that it encouraged - or even may have been referring to - Jewish insurrection against Mohammedan overlords. If it wasn't ever an issue then, it shouldn't be one now. It's only a bloody story at the end of the day, and yet it has to be turned into a hornets nest by those people who are offended by proxy and decree that the story can't be presented in time-honoured fashion because these days the Jews have to be the baddies by default. They really should find better things to do.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Of course it depends how far one extends "exoticism" but overall there are not that many operas affected, so I think it will not be such a major problem (I also expect "peak PC" soon). Even S & D is not really core repertoire anymore nowadays, so it's basically, Abduction, Aida, Butterfly, Turandot and maybe a few more.

I think it would be completely silly to identify Philistines or ancient Israelites with peoples of that region today. And I don't know who would do this except for very misguided western critics. 
I suspect it is far more the general exoticism but even then, it is very hard to identify the ancient Israelites with "the West" in Samson story. One might do this with Caesar & Cleopatra (it was seen like that back then a bit later with "based" Octavianus vs. decadent Antony & Cleopatra) or Greeks vs. Persians (I am old enough to have been taught an echo of "free democratic Greece" vs. "despotic Persia" in the 1980s).

Samson is a rather flawed hero even in the bible story (the old testament has very few non-flawed heroes, Joseph and Daniel might be the only ones).


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Enthusiast said:


> The risks are real: it would be only too easy at this time to do this thing as a spectacle of goodies versus baddies where both groups are named as people who still exist and are still committing atrocities against each other. The Judaic vs Palestinian issue is a very hot one with a lot of real harm being caused. The piece may be OK but it is not if it gets presented as a rallying call for modern day war criminals. It's like Wagner - great composer of great operas - who got used to inspire horrific crimes.


When you put it like this, I feel totally confused, and I start wondering, if the modern and innovative stagings aren't actually more inflammatory, than the traditional ones, or at least the particular traditional one from MET 2018. The modern stagings somehow make it seem more real, that Gaza is Gaza, or that Hebrews are the Jews as we perceive them today, with the layer of Holocaust. I never watched the modern performances in full. I watched part of Vienna recording with Garanca, where the Jews look very Jewish. Or I know there was a different production, where Samson looked like a suicide bomber. The production from London is very fresh, so there was no chance for me to see any excerpts. I know about it from reviews only, but it clearly hints at Gaza.

On the other hand, one review of the traditional performance of MET from 2018 describes it as "harmless and kitchy". I have watched the complete recording and it certainly does not seem to condone the war crimes or what have you. Only it is in accordance with those collonialist sexual phantasies about Orient as Saint Saens and his contemporaries used to have.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I know at least two productions of Handel's "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" put in the "modern" Mid-East. According to them Cleopatra organized the conspiracy with a result that Tolomeo (unarguably villain, of course) was murdered not only to prevent her own murder, but for: 1) put on an ugly, Jackie-for-housewives pink suit; 2) to build a pipeline. And nobody was afraid of anything. Her political talent is beyond average directors concern.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> I start wondering, if the modern and innovative stagings aren't actually more inflammatory, than the traditional ones, or at least the particular traditional one from MET 2018.


Astute observation. People who find politically touchy "issues" in operas are mainly people who are looking for them and want to make statements that demonstrate their up-to-date personal virtue. The procession of knights into the temple of the Holy Grail evokes visions of Nazi storm troopers only in people ideologically committed to finding them there. Unfortunately such people may feel compelled to decorate the stage with swastikas so that the rest of us are forced to share in their fantasies, and the actual opera virtually disappears behind the political fashions of the day.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Kreisler jr said:


> Of course it depends how far one extends "exoticism" but overall there are not that many operas affected, so I think it will not be such a major problem (I also expect "peak PC" soon). Even S & D is not really core repertoire anymore nowadays, so it's basically, Abduction, Aida, Butterfly, Turandot and maybe a few more.


The more rarely played are the other orientalist operas, the more I want them traditional and kitchy . From the obscure stuff, the Pearl Fishers is the only one I know well. I want to explore others once, not burdened by innovation. I know about the existence of Lakme, Djamileh and have a vague sense that several Russian operas contain orientalis elements, like Sadko, The Golden Cockerel, Khovantschina...


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Can whole nations be offended? There will always be someone who's offended (by almost anything) and someone who will not.


These are the people I tend to refer to as the ‘Professionally Offended” of whom there are far too many.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

This old thread contains some gold: Changes in the repertoire?


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> The more rarely played are the other orientalist operas, the more I want them traditional and kitchy . From the obscure stuff, the Pearl Fishers is the only one I know well. I want to explore others once, not burdened by innovation. I know about the existence of Lakme, Djamileh and have a vague sense that several Russian operas contain orientalis elements, like Sadko, The Golden Cockerel, Khovantschina...


Of course one can also make something orientalist that wasn't at all at its time like baroque operas with classical (like Giulio Cesare mentioned above) or crusade (like Alcina, Rinaldo etc.) related subject. Then there are "fairy tales" like Magic Flute or Frau ohne Schatten with exotic elements. Professionally offended can always find something, regardless of details...
If you want to try a rather strange one that used to be more popular in Germany/Austria until the mid-20th century, try "Der Barbier von Bagdad" by Peter Cornelius.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Kreisler jr said:


> Of course one can also make something orientalist that wasn't at all at its time like baroque operas with classical (like Giulio Cesare mentioned above) or crusade (like Alcina, Rinaldo etc.) related subject.


I confess I barely know Haendel. Did he also try to make his music _sound_ oriental ? 

Btw, I listened to a part of Haendel's oratorio about Samson, too. I am just totally unable to decode the emotions in the baroque singing ! Joy or horror - everything sounds the same to me. In the oratorio finale, the crowd has enough time to realise, they are going to be crushed in the temple and die. So they sing, cheerfully and rhythmically - "We are going to die !"


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

No, there is little orientalism in most baroque opera, at least not in Rinaldo or Alcina. There is exoticism in Rameau's "Les Indes galantes" (that is some mix between opera and ballet)

You are wrong about the (Handel) Samson finale. The cheerful end is the Israelites being happy about the vanquished Philistines (and before they have some lamentation for Samson). The latter have before a brief chorus crying for help after a "symphony of terror and confusion" when the temple collapses. This is far shorter than dying Dido or Violetta or Isolde are able to sing


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I'm fully agree. Baroque operas often take place in exotic countries but it doesn't change the style of music. Orientalism came to music in XIX century, as in painting.
I doubt if Lakme could offend anyone, except those professionals who would always find how to be offended. Delibes made a great job to write music that sounded oriental, but his inspirations were not only Indian. And Englishmen are there less attractive, though not villainous.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

ColdGenius said:


> I'm fully agree. Baroque operas often take place in exotic countries but it doesn't change the style of music. Orientalism came to music in XIX century, as in painting.
> I doubt if Lakme could offend anyone, except those professionals who would always find how to be offended. Delibes made a great job to write music that sounded oriental, but his inspirations were not only Indian. And Englishmen are there less attractive, though not villainous.


Less attractive ? Lakme wants an Englishman and poisons herself, because she can't have him


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> Less attractive ? Lakme wants an Englishman and poisons herself, because she can't have him


This Englishman wants Lakme, but has a bride and is in doubt. Lakme's relatives effectively slaughter him, what makes him a victim but doesn't help Lakme. His friend, those two young ladies and their clumsy governess are not so bad maybe, but show enough disdain to the locals. Lakme's fanatic father isn't a pleasant person too.
Well, if television lets us meet people whom we wouldn't let in, then opera is close to the same.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

ColdGenius said:


> This Englishman wants Make, but has a bride and is in doubt. Lakme's relatives effectively slaughter him, what makes him a victim but doesn't help Lakme. His friend, those two young ladies and their clumsy governess are not so bad maybe, but show enough disdain to the locals. Lakme's fanatic father isn't a pleasant person too.
> Well, if television lets us meet people whom we wouldn't let in, then opera is close to the same.


Wikipedia describes the plot differently. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakmé 
Are there more versions ?


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> Wikipedia describes the plot differently.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakmé
> Are there more versions ?


I had in mind a performance I've seen. I think I've made emphasis in a different way. 🙂
My wife says I describe plots a little otherwise.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

elgar's ghost said:


> Seems to me that the eggshell-treading apologists are taking it upon themselves to be offended on behalf of those who don't seem to care a damn one way or the other. God, what a world...


Oh, they care. Come visit NYC . . .


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

jegreenwood said:


> Oh, they care. Come visit NYC . . .


Was there any controversy in NYC regarding Samson and Dellilah ? Or did anybody tell you privately, they feel funny about it ?


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

BBSVK said:


> Was there any controversy in NYC regarding Samson and Dellilah ? Or did anybody tell you privately, they feel funny about it ?


Not that I recall. But I am only a casual fan of opera. I was referring primarily to theater, where I am more extensively involved. And primarily the artists. (Or they were the ones who spoke out, but my sense is that the feelings were shared by audience.)

The artists spoke out - loudly - and have had a significant impact throughout the industry. Starting with a huge increase in the number of produced plays by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) playwrights, but extending much further.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Can whole nations be offended? There will always be someone who's offended (by almost anything) and someone who will not.


I guess whole nations can be offended but that wasn't really my point. Indeed I'd like to stay as far away as possible from the apparently modern love of being offended. What I am concerned about is the underdog, the people who already suffer under discrimination - people who might want to participate in the cultural life of their place of domicile but who can be alienated by insensitive stagings that present "their clan" as evil or fodder for bashing.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

BBSVK said:


> If you don't like Saint Saens that much, whom do you like, or which opera is your favourite ? I am an amateur and I notice, that Samson and Dellilah does not trigger in me that insane adoration like Norma or Carmen do. However, the single most famous aria by Dellilah does trigger that quality of insanity in me.


Which operas do I like? Many from Monteverdi through Handel and Mozart (Mozart underlined!) and Verdi and Wagner and Puccini and Berg and .... . But I have always been a little lukewarm about Saint-Saens' music - I sometimes enjoy it but always feel it is somehow less than so much that I love.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Barbebleu said:


> These are the people I tend to refer to as the ‘Professionally Offended” of whom there are far too many.


There must be such people, I guess, and I'm sure you can find them on both sides of any debate. But I do like to think that modern cultures are welcoming and celebrate diversities. If we can avoid offending or alienating people who belong to less privileged groups then I think we should. But for me it is about people (all of us as individuals) and things that can enrich our lives together. I am not very interested in politics or activism so much as mutual respect and neighbourliness. So it sounds like I agree with you?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

For enjoying traditional oriental music alongside Orientalism in classical music, this CD is attractive.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Unfortunately I feel that we have, as a people, arrived at a place where it is increasingly difficult not to offend someone for whatever perceived slight they feel has been sent their way. I hardly want to debate with anyone nowadays for fear of having them send some agency to my door with accusations of sexism, racism, chauvinism, and any other ism you care to name. It’s hard work just being a person in this temperamental, ‘safe-space’, mollycoddled society that has evolved.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Barbebleu said:


> Unfortunately I feel that we have, as a people, arrived at a place where it is increasingly difficult not to offend someone for whatever perceived slight they feel has been sent their way. I hardly want to debate with anyone nowadays for fear of having them send some agency to my door with accusations of sexism, racism, chauvinism, and any other ism you care to name. It’s hard work just being a person in this temperamental, ‘safe-space’, mollycoddled society that has evolved.


I find much of the discussion in this thread dispiriting and saddening and it makes me feel very old. I count myself lucky that I came to opera in simpler times when it wasn't deemed boring or incorrect to follow the composer's and librettist's instructions. Productions were usually, though not always, set in the period stated by their librettist and composer and it gave me, someone who was usually seeing these operas for the first time, the chance to see them as their composer intended. A few years ago I took my partner to see *La Boheme *at the Colisseum, usually a fail safe work when introducing someone to opera. It was a very ugly, minimalist modern production which had Mimi and Rodolfo shooting up heroin in their Act I love duet. It didn't help that it wasn't very well sung or acted. He hated it and we left at the interval which was placed at the end of Act II. 

If I tend to spend more time listening to opera these days rather than watching it, it's because then I can let my imagination supply the missing details without the intervention of a producer who doesn't have a musical bone in his or her body. The theatre of the mind is usually so much better.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Barbebleu said:


> Unfortunately I feel that we have, as a people, arrived at a place where it is increasingly difficult not to offend someone for whatever perceived slight they feel has been sent their way. I hardly want to debate with anyone nowadays for fear of having them send some agency to my door with accusations of sexism, racism, chauvinism, and any other ism you care to name. It’s hard work just being a person in this temperamental, ‘safe-space’, mollycoddled society that has evolved.


Sounds awful. But are you talking about online debate or talking face to face with another human?


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## Bryangth (8 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> People, don't take me wrong, I sometimes enjoy creative, non/traditional staging of opera. I can be fresh and fun. But... Right now, in London, they are staging Samson and Dellilah by Saint Saens. The temple of the pagan god Dagon is replaced by gambling machines etc. I haven't seen it, it might be nice. However, what really made me depressed - a musical journalist saying, that the traditional staging is _out of question_ now, because it might offend people.


Well, you know, manufactured outrage gets mixed up with misunderstandings about history. Talk about "Song of the South" and "Treemonisha" being staged as it would have been done in the film and in the theatre.

One CAN mitigate some elements, and find ways to make it new without having the look of covering up the original text and music....?


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## cake (Oct 11, 2021)

Ralph P. Locke is a great musicologist who's written extensively on this topic. I think his comments below—from an article entitled "Reflections on Orientalism in Opera (and Musical Theater)"—should frame all discussions of Orientalism in Western art music:

"An adequate interpretation of a Western work set in the 'East,' I conclude, must maintain two concepts in a state of creative tension: on the one hand, the work's essential Westernness—its irrelevance to the East, and the East's to it—and, on the other, its power to reflect and even shape, perhaps damagingly, the attitude and behavior of Westerners toward the non-Western world. I propose that we accept these two concepts as irreconcilable yet equally valid and, at the risk of intellectual messiness (richness?), take care not to privilege one over the other."​
Locke also wrote a classic article on Samson that's very much worth reading. Essentially, Saint-Saëns' work is quite nuanced and his music often subverts the plot's Orientalist binary in fascinating ways. But it's Locke's conclusion that I want to draw special attention to:

"_Samson et Dalila_, despite its polished, confident surface, despite its dramatically satisfying (and, to Western viewers, culturally flattering) final tableau of triumph and obliteration, leaves much unresolved and so, finally, disturbs. That, and not just its film-music exoticisms, is what keeps it alive today. Perhaps something similar may be said for many other cultural products of Orientalism: they may be hopelessly outdated as any kind of statement about the non-Western regions they ostensibly portray, but what they have to tell us about the West's uneasy relationship to the larger world—and about the West's many internal dissymmetries: of race, religion, gender, social class—still rings hauntingly true."​
To me, this is the most convincing argument for why operas which are problematic by today's standards (the aesthetically valuable ones, at least) should continue to be performed.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Very many singers intensely dislike regiestheater too. I know of two great stars personally who have a blacklist of directors with whom they will not work. They simply say no when asked, without providing an explanation. 
Sometimes experimental stagings can succeed, but far more often they seem to be about the tedious ego of the director. And, of course, we might not agree about which stagings work.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> Sounds awful. But are you talking about online debate or talking face to face with another human?


Both.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I can normally manage civility in face to face discussions but I do tend to avoid people who I know have very different views to me or if I have to engage with them (for work or something) I don't go there with them. At the very least I can usually manage to shrug my shoulders and mutter that we will have to agree to disagree.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

cake said:


> Ralph P. Locke is a great musicologist ...


Yes, I have read Locke's article about Samson and Dalila. I liked the fact, that he was not seeking only horrible motives behind everything. He also suggested, that Saint Saens really liked the tunes he heard on his travels. (His other musical pieces point in that direction). So one possible interpretation of the composer's choices is - must the world really be divided ? Why can't we have nice things as they do ?


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I would like to tell about two topical productions. 
First was Semiramide in Bayerische Staatsoper, an undoubtedly oriental opera. I can't say that Rossini has written oriental-style music. It's fanciful, voluptuous, but doesn't remind about Asia, at least, no more than Mozart's Turkish march. And the plot is more complicated, than just orient-based. There are a scandal in Babylon Royal family, Arsace raised in a far province and even an Indian prince. In this production the plot was set in relatively modern Mid-East. Sets were modest enough, except cyclopic statue of Nino or Baal (or both). And costume design was sophisticated. Azema wore a long dress embroidered with beads and a kind of coins, with very long sleeves. So she didn't move by herself, she was only carried by servants. It stressed her depending position and lack of will, but didn't hint to any defined asiatic culture. And Semiramide's outfits were very elegant, reminding someone like Sheikha Moza. She didn't appear especially vicious and villainous, but regretting and tied into knots. I don't think that this production could offend anybody. 
Another one was Alceste in the same theater. It's intriguing, because such interesting productions are rare in this theater. Alceste is not oriental at all, but costumes (wide trousers, fez-like hats etc.) and choreography appeared unarguably oriental, without connection to any epoch or country. It was produced by Sidi Larbi Sherkaui, flemish choreographer of moroccan origin. His dance company was on the stage through the opera, almost constantly moving but it wasn't excessive or obtrusive. It was the rarest event, when I remember the production with equal pleasure as of performance. Unfortunately they didn't shoot it, as I know.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

@ColdGenius I believe, it was enjoyable.

It remainded _me_ of something not enjoyable.
I know the rules - you can present a different culture in which ever way you want, if you come from there yourself.
So one lady once decided to move Norma to French Kongo and make her black, while Pollione represented the side of collonialist France. So she voluntarily assigned her own people the role of barbarians, who make human sacrifices, LOL ! (Ok, I know she meant something else, we all usually side with the Gauls because they are opressed as a Roman colony). Painting somebody's skin to look black is now off limits. So she made the ladies look "black" by giving them some kind of weird hats imitating short curly hair and exposing their necks, which was extremely unflattering to a 60 year old primadonna singing Norma. (I hated it) The info about black Norma and French Kongo apparently did not make it to DVD, because people wonder on Amazon, why those Gauls look so weird and why some wear leopard skin.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> @ColdGenius I believe, it was enjoyable.
> 
> It remainded _me_ of something not enjoyable.


I've remembered it, it was broadcasted on Mezzo TV. Perhaps there was the ugliest production and costume design I've seen. "Tropical" vegetation was portrayed by a gaudy print for a hawaiian shirt. Wigs reminded of aliens' skulls from "Mars attacks!" And dresses! 🤦‍♂️ Especially the one which poor Norma was forced to wear. How could she agree, I can't understand. Maybe she was blackmailed or doubled her fee. But Mariella Devia in her sixties sang amazingly, not for a lady of her age, but for any age. Many, many can't sing at this level even on the top of their carrier. 
As for gauls, they weren't such a pretty peace-loving people, and they practiced human sacrifices and hanged severed heads of enemies on the hedges. They were won by Romans eventually and in opera plot it's them who arouse sympathy. I didn't think of Kongo, I imagined Latin America, but it doesn't change anything.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

It's funny . Nobody today has the slightest objection to movies which take place in the distant past , for example ancient Egypt , ancient Rome, the middle ages etc, but a lot of people. object strenuously if an opera set in those times and places doesn't receive an updated production . The ones who object to this are usually trendy music critics . Go figure . And they use pseudo profound and pseudo intellectual gibberish to demand updated productions .


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

I see sensational news titles, that Glyndebourne is going to adapt offensive operas, but all is paywalled and don't know how much substance there is to all this uproar. This is their "inclusion statement" Inclusion Statement - Glyndebourne


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

BBSVK said:


> I see sensational news titles, that Glyndebourne is going to adapt offensive operas, but all is paywalled and don't know how much substance there is to all this uproar. This is their "inclusion statement" Inclusion Statement - Glyndebourne


Doesn't really tell us much. Time will tell whether this actually means anything, or whether it is merely performative virtue signalling in order to keep as many bums on seats as possible.

UK arts organisations are flusing themselves down the toilet. They deserve everything they have coming to them.

N.


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