# Opera Directors: Their Styles and Idiosyncrasies



## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Our enjoyment of opera performances, whether live or record, depends on many factors. One of these is the director.

The people of this forum could certainly collaborate on an informative list/chart/database/thread on directors. We could attempt to classify directors by style and various other idiosyncrasies. Depending on how this is done there could be information/videos on key/major/recent productions.

A simple good/bad would only possibly be useful to the person that created it, but I think we could put something together where everyone can learn about the directors and make their own decisions. Every artist has their own style, but we can make groupings, comparisons, and so on. Olivier Py and Hans Neuenfels, Laurent Pelly and David McVicar, Patrice Chéreau and Robert Wilson, Franco Zeffirelli and Otto Schenk.

I know this couldn't be complete or definitive, in part because a director's work varies from opera to opera and house to house, but I think something useful could be put together so we can get an idea of what their work is like.


Does this make sense to anyone else? Does this sound interesting? Does it sound like something people of different tastes could contribute to?


This was inspired by discussion in the Next Opera You're Going To thread.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Wikipedia has a List of Opera Directors, which might provide a starting point. This includes 93 different people, including 63 that are living.

I am working on adding to this via a Google Spreadsheet, but I am open to whatever (in part because I don't know what would be best!).


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

mountmccabe said:


> Wikipedia has a List of Opera Directors, which might provide a starting point. This includes 93 different people, including 63 that are living.


Good old wiki.



mountmccabe said:


> I am working on adding to this via a Google Spreadsheet, but I am open to whatever (in part because I don't know what would be best!).


Excellent start. I'm not sure how to categorise. How does the spreadsheet work? Can we had a name to it?

Christof Loy born 1962

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christof_Loy


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

sospiro said:


> Excellent start. I'm not sure how to categorise. How does the spreadsheet work? Can we had a name to it?
> 
> Christof Loy born 1962
> 
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christof_Loy


I have added Christof Loy.

I have changed the permissions and allowed anyone with that link to edit the spreadsheet. I haven't added columns because I am also not sure how best to do this. I am hoping for input! I am hoping for suggestions.

I am not sure a spreadsheet/chart will be enough. But for now people can add names.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

mountmccabe said:


> I have added Christof Loy.
> 
> I have changed the permissions and allowed anyone with that link to edit the spreadsheet. I haven't added columns because I am also not sure how best to do this. I am hoping for input! I am hoping for suggestions.
> 
> I am not sure a spreadsheet/chart will be enough. But for now people can add names.


It's going to be difficult to categorise as one person's genius will be another person's bleeuurrgghh. Lol

How about links to their productions if the spreadsheet will allow? You could allocate, or those of us interested could volunteer, to take a number of the names and research reviews? Then people could make up their own minds.

Once we've got the spreadsheet going, we could get one of the admin to create a sticky, editable list with name and links to productions and reviews.

E.g.

Carsen, Robert 
Nationality: Canadian
Born: 1954

https://bachtrack.com/review-falstaff-royal-opera-ambrogio-maestri


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

sospiro said:


> It's going to be difficult to categorise as one person's genius will be another person's bleeuurrgghh. Lol


Exactly.

And that sounds like a good idea, to start with finding reviews and video links.

Maybe this would work better as a document than a spreadsheet?

Robert Carsen

Falstaff
ROH live review 2012: https://bachtrack.com/review-falstaff-royal-opera-ambrogio-maestri
ROH trailer: 




Tannhäuser
Opéra Bastille, live review 2011: http://opera-cake.blogspot.com/2011/10/carsens-tannhauser-paints-elisabeth-in.html
Liceu Barcelona 2008 DVD: http://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/2013/04/singers-disappoint-in-smashing-carsen.html
Liceu Barcelona 2007/8 video clip: 




And so on.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

I think this is a great idea for a thread, but I'd like to see it be more than just a database of published reviews. I'm more interested in what our membership has to say about various directors. Here's my layman's go at Robert Carsen.

Director: Robert Carsen

Based on:
Mefistofele - Chicago
Orfeo ed Euridice - Chicago
Dialogues des Carmélites - Chicago
Iphigénie en Tauride - Chicago
Eugene Onegin - Chicago (also Met HD broadcast in 2007)

Comments: Favors a stark, empty stage or black box (Iphigénie) or white box (Onegin) with a select few highly evocative period- specific details and detailed, period-specific costumes. This approach draws attention to the character's relationships and emotional state while still evoking context. Generally faithful to the composer's and librettist's intent, if not the details of their original stage direction - delivers their message but with his own voice. The period setting is either libretto accurate, composer contemporary, or neutral, but in any case I found his period adjustments to be non-obstrusive. Stage action is natural, heartfelt, and relatable. Knows how to pack a dramatic punch when the time comes (Mefistofele, Dialogues).

Recommendation: A Carsen production is always a draw for me. Fresh, insightful, respectful. The production may not be what I'm expecting, but it's never a let down either.


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## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

How about Harry Kupfer

Dark sets

Black leather trench coats.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Categories (merely a starting point):
Classic - Zeffirelli
Traditional - Elisha Moshinsky, John Copely, Francesca Zambello
Economical - Graham Vick, Richard Jones
Clever reinventors - Peter Sellars, Jonathan Miller
Interesting, without being offensive - Robert Carsen
Radical - Harry Kupfer
Modern - Kaspar Holten
Provocative - Damiano Michieletto
Eurotrash - 

We could also note recurring preoccupations in their works, period details, emphasis on costumes, brutality & blood, sexual violence, nudity, trenchcoats, gas masks.

I have to agree that Carsen's work is consistently pleasing.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Vincent Boussard

I saw his excellent Manon production in Vilnius a couple of months back. Looking through his bio, there seems to be an emphasis on colours, lighting and costume design.

Style: Theatrical, colourful
Recurring themes: Chandeliers, lighting, reflections, shadows, costumes

Therefore the opposite of many current directors.

http://www.operabase.com/a/Vincent_Boussard/17577


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## Braddan (Aug 23, 2015)

*The good, the bad and the ugly*

*David McVicar*

A firm favourite of mine since I first saw his Madama Butterfly for Scottish Opera. I have yet to see a production of his I haven't liked and I think I have almost all of his available DVD/Blu Rays. I suspect he has a low tolerance of bad acting and there will be many singers who would find his temperament hard to take but he always seems to get the best out of those he does work with. The ROH_ Les Troyens _is one of the most powerful and visually stunning productions I have ever seen.

*Jonathan Kent*

With his experienced and successful theatrical background and some very notable productions behind him (Sweeney Todd revival was the one I saw most recently) I was very disappointed in his recent Manon Lescaut at Covent Garden. Like many, I found the softly pornographic element unpleasant. I am open to new interpretations and there are many modern productions I like but I found this just plain ugly. This brings me to...

*Ole Anders Tandberg*

Like Kent, the Norwegian director has had a good track record, particularly in Stockholm where his new productions of Mozart operas have been generally well received. However, I saw Don Giovanni at the Royal Swedish Opera last April and was not impressed. Act One took place in a toilet with a row of stalls (not original) occupied by the female chorus. Leporello carried a video cam with projections onto a screen behind (not original) so he and the Don could poke the cam under the stalls and film..well...you can work that one out for yourselves. There was quite a lot of violence and the singers were generally under-directed. It appears that, since then, Tandberg has taken this to a whole new level with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

http://operamylove.com/2014/09/22/lady-macbeth-of-mtsensk-in-norway/

Not to self: One to avoid.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Robert (Bob) Wilson was born in Waco (Texas), and his first success as an opera stage director was Glass's _Einstein on the Beach_ (1976).






I watched the opera, in Wilson's staging, a few years later at Madrid, and it was indeed very much in tune with the music, also a little bit shocking at the time that the audience was expected, even encouraged, to walk in and out of the performance. I confess I took the opportunity after some hours to get a glass of champagne at the bar.

I have watched since then quite a few other stagings by Mr. Wilson, both live and in DVD, such as _Lohengrin, Medée, Alceste, Pelléas, Madama Butterfly, Norma, Parsifal, Orphée et Eurydice, O Corvo Blanco, Aida_,... and my personal favorite staging from him, Janacek's _Osud_.

Well, Opera is not necessarily the right place for naturalism. It's a very stylized art form with a distinct code, beginning with characters singing instead of speaking, of course. This is the musical aspect, true, but why should we get a realistic performance in the movements, gestures, settings,...?

When we require the singers to act in accordance with a realistic approach, we often get back a kind of frozen set of acting gestures, firmly rooted in 19th and early 20th century melodrama. And while this could be, of course, the right set of codes for Romantic and Post-Romantic opera, why it should be used also for older, or younger works. Or why cannot we use an alternative set of codes to stage Romantic opera itself?.

Wilson decided to create his own codes from the beginning. To create his own language, a code that is not apparent at first sight, but that is growing little by little, small gesture by small gesture. A very organic thing, incorporating acting (or lack of acting, a kind of hieratic approach), movement, dancing, colors, light,... and blending them with the music and the singing.

A very difficult and risky proposition, with wonderful insights, but also with some big blunders. And the risk of autoplagiarism, of exhausting your own codes, of being trapped into your own style... always present.

This is a hypnotic experience:


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Don Fatale said:


> Categories (merely a starting point):
> Classic - Zeffirelli
> Traditional - Elisha Moshinsky, John Copely, Francesca Zambello
> Economical - Graham Vick, Richard Jones
> ...


Would there be a "time shift" element to this, so that every ten years the categories shift and the Directors in the bottom catagories ("Modern" and "Provocative") become ("Classic" and "Traditional")?

N.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

Don Fatale said:


> Categories (merely a starting point):
> Classic - Zeffirelli
> Traditional - Elisha Moshinsky, John Copely, Francesca Zambello
> Economical - Graham Vick, Richard Jones
> ...


This is a brave thread and I thankfully the Directors with respect. There is inevitably some confusion between the contribution of the Director and the Designers. I believe it is true to say that the former selects the later often working with them on several productions so they seem to have their own style.

Don F , concise!. The only category I would challenge is Economical. Both Vick and Jones produce interesting work that (at least in my experience) plays with the expected presentation sometimes radically. Vick produces small scale works for Birmingham City Opera and large scale (with corresponding budget) for Breganz. Pounteny is someone else I'd put with them. Although primarily (and I suspect at heart) a modernist he often surprised.

Economical : James Clutton, Opera Holland Park (though I admit sadly I've not been for a few years.)

Have the Alden's retired? David Alden managed to get a real 'political' charge into the drama, and favoured minimalist sets strongly lit. Critics often found his cavalier attitude to 'detail' wanting but I was often thrilled.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Strange that a name like Calixto Bieito is missing on this list. To me probably the epitome of Eurotrash and holds hands with Hans Neuenfels. They could likely be properly equated with Robert Mapplethorpe -- the darling of feces.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

For me the late Jean Pierre Ponnelle had imagination in spades but never allowed it to detract from the composer's intentions. Sad he died so young.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Belowpar said:


> Have the Alden's retired? David Alden managed to get a real 'political' charge into the drama, and favoured minimalist sets strongly lit. Critics often found his cavalier attitude to 'detail' wanting but I was often thrilled.


I have seen no indication that either has retired. Christopher has upcoming new productions of _Tristan und Isolde_ for Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in March 2016 and _Sweeney Todd_ for Glimmerglass in July 2016.

I'm not sure what David has upcoming but his new production of _Alcina_ for Teatro Real Madrid just opened a couple weeks ago. EDIT: Oops, that was not new. It premiered in 2012 at Opéra National de Bordeaux.

So then maybe his latest was The Queen of Spades for ENO in June 2015.


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## Autumn Leaves (Jan 3, 2014)

Alain Maratrat's one of my personal favorites, with his interactive productions. If you have a comic opera, he's the ideal director for it. Bonus point if the opera has a silly plot or no plot at all (by the latter I mean Il Viaggio a Reims).


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

DavidA said:


> For me the late Jean Pierre Ponnelle had imagination in spades but never allowed it to detract from the composer's intentions. Sad he died so young.


Wise words spoken :tiphat:


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