# Do they do this to other operas or just Fidelio?



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

If I go on You Tube I see many productions of Fidelio that are out of the correct era, and a number of avant garde productions such as this:






I guess I understand the artistic community wanting to do whatever they please, but I should think the Beethoven would have a fit if he saw his wonderful opera hacked like this. Is nothing sacred? It really irks me, but thankfully there are productions that are tastefully done and in the correct era.

So do other operas get this kind of treatment also? Most operas or just a select few? Are some operas more conducive to this type of (mis)treatment?


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Check out the RINGS on youtube.


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Verdi on the lavatory.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Florestan said:


> So do other operas get this kind of treatment also? Most operas or just a select few? Are some operas more conducive to this type of (mis)treatment?


I can't comment on _Fidelio_ as it's not an opera I know very well but other popular operas are changed and/or updated. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I saw David McVicar's _La bohème_ which was updated to today and it worked. But Stefan Herheim's, where Mimì dies at the beginning, wasn't very well received. Member _Operafocus_ commented on this in the Name & Shame thread.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I believe ENO produced another horror show with their Fidelio recently.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Wonderful what the new crowd is doing to these masterworks, isn't it?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

They do it to Shakespeare as well,it's ridiculous. There was a play on TV where they were Nazis in full uniform,but speaking the old English of Shakespeare still--laughable and horrible !!


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Florestan said:


> but I should think the Beethoven would have a fit if he saw his wonderful opera hacked like this. Is nothing sacred?


I would think Beethoven would be surprised and gratified that his opera was still being staged 200 years after it was written. He would probably be confused by the staging but as the composer he would be happy that his music was still appreciated. And no, nothing is sacred, especially not some disposable piece if Viennese entertainment that the creator himself called a shipwreck.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

They do it even to _Little Red Riding Hood_, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

They seem to do it to Wagner most often and in the most atrocious ways.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

don't listen to anybody, they *only* do it to Fidelio  it's an anti B conspiracy, I tells ya.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Aramis said:


> WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?


Haven't gone to an opera since the 1980s, nor have I gone to a movie or watched television since then. Kind of like a modern day Rip Van Winkle. From what I hear, I have not missed much.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

quack said:


> ... that the creator himself called a shipwreck.


 Can you provide a reference for this?


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Florestan said:


> Can you provide a reference for this?


http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/s...oven and other people&suchparameter=&_seite=1

Well it depends on translation, "stranded ship" might be a better choice, he also called the work "the ruins of an old castle" in letters to Georg Treitschke.

http://mq.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/2-3/396.extract

A work the creator struggled to make with multiple conflicting versions and a work neither the composer nor the audience seemed to like that much. Calling it sacred seems strange. Why should we, 200 years later, worry about the staging which isn't even the reason it is famous and why should we try and duplicate a musician's flawed vision of stagecraft to present his opera.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

moody said:


> They do it to Shakespeare as well,it's ridiculous. There was a play on TV where they were Nazis in full uniform,but speaking the old English of Shakespeare still--laughable and horrible !!


I've seen several productions of Shakespeare (especially Othello) where the characters were singing rather than speaking. I really can't understand why these artists feel they have the authority to distort Shakespeare's original vision.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Eschbeg said:


> I've seen several productions of Shakespeare (especially Othello) where the characters were singing rather than speaking.


I think you confuse productions of Shakespeare with productions of Verdi/Gounod/Thomas etc.

Shakespeare rarely created original stories. If Verdi's Macbeth is "production of Shakespeare's work", then Shakespeare's Macbeth is, by this logic, production of Holinshed's.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

From what I've read in the opera magazines to which I subscribe, traditional productions which set the opera's action in the intended period seem to be in a minority now. Updating has become so commonplace that it's probably in danger of becoming a cliché itself.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I have to say that I am in the minority here, I enjoy productions that explore various facets of the operas, and like sospiro said, I don't mind updating as long it respects the original. Giulio Cesare in the British Empire, yes, the parallels are so clear; Aida in the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Catholic bishops replacing Egyptian priests, no thank you Mr Py, too much dissonance between the staging and the music. Rusalka as a Disney/Schenk fairy tale, no thank you, it's too disturbing a story, let's bring some of that darkness out, as for example in the recent La Monnaie production.

My favourite production ever is the Jonathan Miller 50s little Italy Rigoletto from ENO, and in fact now if I see a "traditional" Rigoletto it bores me.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

MAuer said:


> Updating has become so commonplace that it's probably in danger of becoming a cliché itself.


"In danger"? Regie theater is already deep in the swamp of cliches.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

There is no problem with updating as long as it remains true to the creator's vision. I recently saw the Met Falstaff updated but absolutely true to the spirit of what Verdi wanted. The problem comes when some moronic producer thinks he knows better than the genius who created it.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Florestan said:


> Haven't gone to an opera since the 1980s, nor have I gone to a movie or watched television since then. Kind of like a modern day Rip Van Winkle. From what I hear, I have not missed much.


Tell Pisarro to let you out for a spell there, Florestan. But seriously (too late for that?) I admire your ascetic and monastic choice. Won't emulate, but do admire it. There is a point to it in the modern world.

The point of these horrific staging abortions is not interpretation but debasement. They've have fought hard, it seems, to get their hands on these classics to start destroying them. Ineptitude and insanity cannot be the only reason for this loathsome garbage.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Aramis said:


> Shakespeare rarely created original stories. If Verdi's Macbeth is "production of Shakespeare's work", then Shakespeare's Macbeth is, by this logic, production of Holinshed's.


Good point. Shame on Shakespeare for not respecting the integrity of Holinshed's work!


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## Yardrax (Apr 29, 2013)

The problem seems to lie in the fact that Opera directors think that they are actually at all important and that they have some kind of mandate to 'say something' through the staging which is to flip the real relationship on it's head. Perhaps a similar absurdity would be if a museum decided to provide commentary on it's paintings through more or less elaborate and striking frames. Regular old wooden frames might be boring but that is their job, similarly any opera staging which seeks to draw attention away from the music and the singers has really failed in it's task, which is ideally to be as boring as humanly possible.

Probably the ideal solution would be if everyone employed by Opera companies whose job has anything to do with coming up with concepts for staging were to suddenly find themselves out on the streets looking for a new racket and leaving the musicians and singers to make do with whatever was left behind.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Aramis said:


> Regie theater is already deep in the swamp of cliches.


has it ever been anything else? I wager po-mo aesthetics is just a cliche jigsaw puzzle.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Yardrax said:


> similarly any opera staging which seeks to draw attention away from the music and the singers has really failed in it's task, which is ideally to be as boring as humanly possible.


hey, I didn't get that memo.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Yardrax said:


> The problem seems to lie in the fact that Opera directors think that they are actually at all important and that they have some kind of mandate to 'say something' through the staging which is to flip the real relationship on it's head. Perhaps a similar absurdity would be if a museum decided to provide commentary on it's paintings through more or less elaborate and striking frames. Regular old wooden frames might be boring but that is their job, similarly any opera staging which seeks to draw attention away from the music and the singers has really failed in it's task, which is ideally to be as boring as humanly possible.


The parallel doesn't really work. A painting can be appreciated even without a frame, as a simple canvas. Opera has no meaning until it is performed, and then you need someone to decide HOW to perform it, both musically and dramatically. Enter conductor and director.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

quack said:


> http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/s...oven and other people&suchparameter=&_seite=1
> 
> Well it depends on translation, "stranded ship" might be a better choice, he also called the work "the ruins of an old castle" in letters to Georg Treitschke.
> 
> ...


The phrase "stranded ship" is used in the English National Opera Guide on Fidelio, but they also note that "Fidelio was destined to remain Beethoven's sole and glorious contribution to the operatic stage."

That audiences did not like it much could be because the initial performance of Leonora (1805) occurred when the French occupied Vienna and so the opera was attended mostly by soldiers who really didn't understand it or care, so naturally if flopped in that context. Further, Romain Rolland notes of its reintroduction early in 1806 (Beethoven the Creator" page 183), "There seems hardly any doubt that the work [Leonora] was the victim of a malicious cabal that had been exasperated by not only the art but the personality of Beethoven..." Yet, in the face of all this opposition, Beethoven continued to work on this opera. Multiple conflicting versions may simply show a work in progress. Beethoven was known to work and re-work passages to an intense degree until he got just what he wanted, so why not the same for his opera?

Stagings are important and Hermann W. von Waltershausen in 1924 pointed out clearly the ordinary errors in the interpretation and staging of Fidelio noting, for example, that Florestan is not an amorous tenor (there go many of the popular stagings) but a man of forty, matured in politics and already aged by experience. (from footnote 224 in Beethoven the Creator). The footnote goes on to say that "The nineteenth century grand opera and the Bayreuth stage have deformed the optic and acoustic of the theatre." Staging does matter.

Ultimately, Beethoven produced one of the greatest operas ever put to music, if not the greatest (depending on what you are looking for in an opera). But let's listen to what the great conductor Leonard Bernstein had to say about it:
Young People's Concert: Fidelio: A Celebration of Life.

And what I meant by sacred was not the opera itself, but remaining true to the composers will.

Finally, let me quote from the back cover of the Dover publication of the English translation of Romain Rolland's book (bold emphasis mine):


> In the period from 1803 to 1806, Beethoven composed three major works that were to remain, *in his own eyes*, the culminating peaks of his genius: the "Eroica" Symphony, the Appassionata, and "Leonora," his only opera (subsequently known as "Fidelio").


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## Lt.Belle (Jan 19, 2014)

I saw Die Zauberflöte in Amsterdam and the city-opera in Vienna... we loved the one in Vienna cause there everything was as you'd expect. In Amsterdam they had/have a real modern avant-garde approach. It was good too visually and especially the singing. Lots of soundeffects quite a total experience. The Queen was in a wheelchair the entire performance it had to show her vulnurability... a bit too avant-garde for me but the rest was excellent.


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## Rackon (Apr 9, 2013)

Florestan said:


> Haven't gone to an opera since the 1980s, nor have I gone to a movie or watched television since then. Kind of like a modern day Rip Van Winkle. From what I hear, I have not missed much.


Actually, you've missed a great deal. I say this as someone who's been attending opera and theater for 40 years.

Do you never wish to grow in knowledge, expand your frame of teference, experience a different point of view?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Rackon said:


> Actually, you've missed a great deal. I say this as someone who's been attending opera and theater for 40 years.
> 
> Do you never wish to grow in knowledge, expand your frame of teference, experience a different point of view?


Oh, I didn't just sleep or crawl into a hole in the ground. I read many books over the years. Books are far more conducive to reflection on the information that you receive than is video where the images continue coming at you leaving little time for reflection on the subject matter. As a consequence, it is easier to accept what is coming out of the video without critical thinking than it is with books. So even the "good" programs, the educational ones, are not necessarily the best way to get that education.

I still don't think I missed much since a lot of television and movies is filled with risque imagery and trivial subject matter. Furthermore, I don't miss the commercials on TV or radio which I also avoid. From the occasional times that I happen by a running television, I see in moments enough to ensure me that it is not what I want to spend my time doing.

As for opera, I saw some about 30 years ago, maybe a dozen at most, and as I recall, most were like soap operas, which are a genera that I don't care for.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Florestan said:


> Stagings are important and Hermann W. von Waltershausen in 1924 pointed out clearly the ordinary errors in the interpretation and staging of Fidelio noting, for example, that Florestan is not an amorous tenor (there go many of the popular stagings) but a man of forty, matured in politics and already aged by experience. (from footnote 224 in Beethoven the Creator). The footnote goes on to say that "The nineteenth century grand opera and the Bayreuth stage have deformed the optic and acoustic of the theatre." Staging does matter.


I'm not sure that von Waltershausen is right about Florestan's age. In his aria, he sings, "In des Lebens *Frühlingstagen* . . . " Roughly translated, "In the springtime of my life, happiness has deserted me." Springtime suggests youth, not maturity. And he's only been imprisoned for two years, so it's not likely he's referring to some event in the distant past. Marzelline is in her teens, as the original uncut dialogue makes clear, and it's very likely that Jaquino and "Fidelio" are about the same age as she is. Florestan and Leonore are probably in their 20s or 30s.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

The point is surely if it actually shed light on the opera itself. The Magic Flute mentioned above looks as though it might do, though one would have to see the whole production to judge. However, many producers just seem intent on introducing jarring anachronisms. These only tell us about some daft train of thought the producer has in his own brain. It has nothing to do with the opera and in fact distracts from it. The other extreme, of course, is the traditional production, like a DVD I have of the Magic Flute from the Met. All very good but it doesn't really challenge the viewer in any way. 
I saw the national theatres new Coriolanus the other day. This looks as though it had been revamped but it really did shed light on Shakespeare's play. There were no real gimmicks but some extremely fine acting. Unfortunately many producers just try and shock by introducing gimmicks in place of real creativity.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Just looking at the same company's Walkure trailer. Hard not to make Wagner look ridiculous, with those Valkyries flapping their wings!


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

MAuer said:


> I'm not sure that von Waltershausen is right about Florestan's age. In his aria, he sings, "In des Lebens *Frühlingstagen* . . . " Roughly translated, "In the springtime of my life, happiness has deserted me." Springtime suggests youth, not maturity. And he's only been imprisoned for two years, so it's not likely he's referring to some event in the distant past. Marzelline is in her teens, as the original uncut dialogue makes clear, and it's very likely that Jaquino and "Fidelio" are about the same age as she is. Florestan and Leonore are probably in their 20s or 30s.


You make a very good point. It appears that Waltershausen's full writeup is in German, so I won't be able to consult it, yet he must have had a good reason for saying that.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Last season Vancouver Opera set The Magic Flute on the West Coast of BC with Haida First Nations art and sang it in English. It looked beautiful, but when I hear Mozart I think about Vienna and Europe, not here. I want to be transported far away, not up the coast a few miles! 

Next season the Vancouver Opera will do Die Fledermaus set in Vancouver high society, I don't know what time era. It'll be sung in English. 

In Italy I saw a production of La Traviata set in the 1920s. 

A few years ago, the Van Opera performed Carmen set in Cuba 1950s. 

I guess it's a bit of a shock for the first timers to each opera, but if you've already seen the opera a few times you might want a new version to keep it fresh.


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