A purely hypothetical exercise

So, say you’re a stage director (work with me here), and you’re hired to direct a new production of an opera we’ll call…um…Carigodelio for the purposes of this exercise. Your interpretation of the opera is that none of the characters know how to communicate with each other. They never listen, they’re all in their own worlds, and they don’t really see each other. Wouldn’t it be cool, you think, if you somehow manifested that theatrically? You could have the singers never look at each other, delivering all their lines straight out to the audience instead. Perfect. So now you have a concept, but what about the setting? There’s no chance that you’ll leave it in the time and place indicated in the libretto; how boring would that be? No, instead you decide to place it in a non-specific post-apocalyptic world, ensuring that you can a) use modern clothing in as many shades of gray as possible; b) leave the stage completely bare, save a few random pieces of large machinery; and c) instruct the principals, chorus, and supers to keep a deadpan look of shock on their faces at all times. Awesome.

Sure, the singers may argue with you for a moment about your concept, but not for long. This is Germany, after all. Opening night rolls around, and you’re feeling pretty good about yourself. That moment of silence at the end of Act I? That must have been because the audience was stunned by your creativity. Your eyes pan through the house. Wait a minute. A familiar face jumps out at you. Oh, it’s Little Ms. Bossy! She doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself. She’s checked her watch three times in the past four minutes, she has apparently developed a raging case of Restless Leg Syndrome, and if you listen closely you might hear her sigh under her breath. She’s disappointed. She’s feeling as if her time is being wasted, and thanking God that at least she didn’t pay for the ticket.

It’s not that I’m a purist. Far from it. I strongly believe that the only way to keep our art form alive and vital is to re-imagine the classics while developing a new canon of repertoire. Honestly, I don’t even really care if updating a piece makes sense all the way through. When I start directing my own productions, I imagine I’ll be a stickler for those details, but as an audience member, I’m not too precious about them. I’ll forgive a lot if the singing is exciting and the characters and relationships are alive.

What I’m not interested in seeing is cold opera. I consider myself a rational, somewhat intellectual person, but when I go to the opera I don’t want to see some academic exercise. I want to be drawn in, not held at arm’s length. I want to feel joy in the comedies and heartbreak in the tragedies, and most of all I want to leave the theater somehow different than I was before the lights went down. I’m always a critic—I think that’s inherent in any director—but it’s rare that I see a production that doesn’t delight me in some way, even if it’s not particularly my aesthetic.

So when you get that contract, please let the singers relate to each other in a real way. Go ahead and put a wrecking ball on the stage, knock yourself out, but don’t leave it at that. Don’t expect us to care about the characters when you clearly don’t.

And please, please, don’t stop the music in the middle of your (Italian) opera, pipe in street noise through the speakers, and have the mezzo read passages from the Bible out loud in German while the set is being changed behind her.

In your purely hypothetical production of Carigodelio, I mean. Ahem.