# Do different Productions change the storylines around a bit?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Just curious, b/c I read the synopsis of Debussy's opera Pelleas on Wiki and the story seems diff than what I recall while watching...


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## josquindesprez (Aug 20, 2017)

I've seen Brangäne pour the potion over the side of the boat before handing over the wine for Tristan and Isolde to drink. Pretty consequential. Not sure how big a change you're looking for, though.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

josquindesprez said:


> I've seen Brangäne pour the potion over the side of the boat before handing over the wine for Tristan and Isolde to drink. Pretty consequential. Not sure how big a change you're looking for, though.


Anything really, I recall mellisades (sp?) running away, and on wiki it says she is killed.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Directors may do anything they feel like doing to the stories of operas nowadays. Sometimes you can't figure out _what's_ going on. But then that's true of some operas as originally written. Which witch threw whose baby into the fire?


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## dreadnought (Nov 27, 2017)

I was reading DiDonato's old blog, and apparently she was in a production of La Donna del Lago that turned Malcolm (mezzo-soprano, canonical true love who Elena ends up with in the end) into a figment of Elena's imagination, and she ended up with the King in the end instead. Which is quite a change from the normal story, haha.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Yes, there are some opera productions wherein the plot is modified. There are some operas where the plot is not clear, does not make sense, and where there are different interpretations of the meaning and characterization. But some directors will make adjustments even in situations when it is more clear what was intended.

Personally I think opera tends to be poor at plot, that is to say it is not a good way of conveying plot and plot - as what, precisely happens - tend to not be that important to the opera as a whole. Most people that rewatch operas over and over do not do so to find out what happens, but to hear the music, and be taken on that emotional journey. That journey can shift somewhat anyway depending on a number of factors, most prominent of all being the performers.

_Pelléas et Mélisande_ is even an extreme example of that; very little happens in this symbolist drama. It already follows a sort of dream-logic and the real drama is interior.

There may be other productions that do not have Mélisande die at the end, but did you perhaps watch the version from Aix-en-Provence directed by Katie Mitchell? That production really goes in for the dream- or memory- logic approach, uses doubles, and plays with things a lot. I can't really defend it right now - I would need a careful rewatch to see what I think - but I remember it as fascinating.

That is to say, I may not want this to be the only _Pelléas et Mélisande_ I see, but that is true no matter what.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It may be of interest to note that changing the story line is something quite traditionally done in ballet. Of course there is no libretto in dance, so that only the score is there to guide a director/choreographer in his choices. Matthew Bourne's _Swan Lake,_ in which the swans are men and homoeroticism is a principal theme, is a fascinating and, I think, successful example. No telling what Tchaikovsky would have thought; it might have hit too close to home for comfort, or he might secretly have loved it.

Where there's a libretto the possibilities are more limited. I can allow for changes if they illuminate the opera in some way and don't contradict the text or the spirit of the music. No rodents in Lohengrin, please (wouldn't they have caused bubonic plague back then?).


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

In last season's new production of Tristan & Isolde at the Met, the director, whose name I can't recall off hand , had Isolde commit suicide at the end of the Liebestod by slitting her wrists ! Yikes !
Wagner is still spinning in his grave at Bayreuth !


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

My favorite is the Lucia production where Edgardo is about to do himself in after hearing his beloved is dead when lo! who walks up to him in an apparition but Lucy baby herself -- and with a weapon for him to do the deed yet (poor guy I guess was to weak to do himself in without encouragement.)
That was the same production where there was a "family photographer" taking photos of the wedding guests in different poses while the Sextet was being sung, thereby distracting the audience (with wide eyes and mouths open to a round "O") away from the beauty of the magnificent aria.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Since I can't get to many performances myself and so don't have to waste my money on regietheater, I relish everyone's else's horror stories. :devil:


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## Autumn Leaves (Jan 3, 2014)

It's harder sometimes to find productions that _do_ stick to the story. What about the famous Copenhagen Ring, where Sieglinde pulls out the sword, Hunding doesn't die and just walks away, and _Brünnhilde doesn't burn_ and gives birth to a baby girl instead?

The productions of Dmitry Chernyakov tend to deprive baritones of their romances. I have no idea why  In his _Eugene Onegin_ (he has made several, as far as I know), Tatyana in the third act is already madly in love with her husband. All well and good, but it really downplays her inner conflict in the final… And in his _Snow Maiden_ (Paris, 2017) the heroine falls in love with Lel instead of Mizgir.

It's not just the last two decades' thing and doesn't always go along with blatant Regietheater (pistols, stiletto heels, high-tech furniture etc. ). The absolutely gorgeous 1985 production of _Agrippina_ added an incestuous relationship, complete with a passionate kiss, between Agrippina and Nero.


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