So...this was Puccini's first big success, although these days it's lesser-known than his realhits (Tosca, Butterfly, Boheme, Turandot). But it's still Puccini, yeah? You can't complain too much, can you? Well...sort of. But actually you can, and this particular production, from 2014 at Covent Gardens, compounds the issues, such that it's sometimes difficult to tell whether it or the opera itself is at fault.
So I've said that I have no problem with operas being transplanted in time and space, and this remains true. In fact, I'll go further than that and say that sometimes this is preferable. Depending on the what and the when, operas being performed in their original settings can feel somewhat stuffy, such that their dynamism is blunted. It's easy to overlook small disjunctions between libretto and action; so characters are singing about swords while waving guns around; whatever. It matters not. AND YET. There are always exceptions to prove these rules, and, well, here's one of them. Because the production is just so massively out-of-sync with the action, that...well. It's a modern-day thing, is what it is. Or perhaps the nineteen-seventies, as it seemed to me; I'm not sure it's totally clear itself. But let's just say modern-day. The problems are exactly the same either way. It actually lookspretty good to me; very glammy and candy-colored. But...hmmm.
So here's the basic story of Manon Lescaut: the male lead, de Grieux, is feeling melancholy and stuff when, whaddaya know, he meets Nofirstname Lescaut and his sister Manon, who is being sent to a convent. Natch, de Grieux instantly falls in love with her, but a skeezy old guy, Geronte, also has designed on her. In the end, de Grieux and Manon get away together, but then it's the next scene, and now Manon is Geronte's mistress. Lescaut appears and they're going to escape together but oh no, the guards come to arrest Manon (for being a prostitute apparently; maybe this was obvious to viewers of the time or to people who are more familiar than me with these conventions, but it felt disorientingly arbitrary to me). So she gets exiled to America, as you do (Louisiana supposedly, but if there's any explicit mention of this in-text, in passed me by), and in the next scene she and de Grieux are staggering through the desert (you know--the Great Louisiana Desert), and then she dies of desert-related causes; the end.
I haven't read the novel on which this opera was based, but a quick look at the wikipedia entry indicates that it's a lot more coherent than this is. Granted, that's not a wholly rare problem in operas (the somewhat confusing thing where we're supposed to just assume that the main couple had been together for some time between the first and second acts is very reminiscent of Traviata), but the fact that this had five different libretticists certainly can't have helped. It's all very muddled, from the fact that the central relationship is just kind of assumed to--of course--the final desert scene, which, it really can't be overemphasized, is a truly bizarre non-sequitur. And then there's the production: as I said, I can overlook a lot, but I just can't ignore the fact that French prostitutes are not being exiled to America in the twentieth or twenty-first century. I mean, the idea that she's being made to join a convent seems weirdly old-fashioned as well, but on its own that would be overlookable; combined with everything else...I don't know.
The cast. Right. It certainly stars big names: Manon, de Grieux, and Lescaut are sung respectively by Kristine Opolais, Jonas Kauffmann, and Christopher Maltman. And, you know, they're all good actors and they all do what they can, but I can't help but feel like there's an extent to which they're overshadowed by the flaws in the thing itself. Take Maltman in particular: I always like his performances; he has a very good physical presence for playing sneaky or cunning characters (you could say I'm a Christopher Maltfan Jesus that was lame). And yet, what the hell is the deal with Lescaut? First he's trying to pimp out his sister, then he's helping her and de Grieux, I mean SERIOUSLY, this could be character development, but it seems more like the incoherence of having too many writers. I would like to see a somewhat more normal production of this; certainly, some of the problems would clear up. But it might, in the end, be one that's better to listen to than watch, and that one certainly shouldn't think too hard about.
Funny how things come around; I know (I know this because my mother happens to be one of France's foremost experts on 18th century opera, it happens, I'm sure you have an uncle who knows all there is to know about the reproductive cycle of komodo dragons) that the original novel was a huge influence on 18th-century French opera. And it's no surprise, then, that it got adapted into operatic form several times; the Puccini version is actually the third: the one I'm most familiar with, through my mother's work, is the Daniel Auber version from 1856, with thankfully just one librettist, a man whose name, by some amusing quirk of fate, was Mr Scribe. There's also the 1884 Jules Massenet one entitled just Manon, which I know nothing about, but it has a very detailed synopsis on its English Wikipedia page, if you care to read it. No desert, fancy that.
ReplyDeleteOh, and personally, I rather disapprove of modernized, "auteur" performances in general. Perhaps I'm biased due to, as I said, my mother having spent her life studying operas for a living, and particularly their libretti and original direction more than the music itself; but an opera is, as far as I'm concerned, not just its music. The costumes and stage directions and spoken bits are as much part of the work of art as the music. A reimagined direction can be fun, of course, but it's inherently not watching the opera per se, but rather a sort of remake/remix. I would be less averse to them if they hadn't somehow become the default in modern productions.
I knew about the Massenet Manon, which I certainly plan on seeing one of these days. Had never heard of the other, however. Interesting! Is it any good?
ReplyDeleteAs you could no doubt have very easily predicted, I can't agree with your second point at all. As we see here, there are instances when changing the setting can go awry. And it's certainly possible to think of examples that would just seem weird--an updated Boris Godunov would raise eyebrows, certainly (I mean, I might be okay with it, but it's understandable that people wouldn't). But I just don't think most operas are that culturally or historically specific. So, for instance, on a twentieth-century production of Macbeth, one amazon reviewer writes: "A crap production, this is Shakespeare and the time and place is Scotland between the 7th and 8th centuries, having Banco and others running around with pistols and rifles was totally ridiculous," and so on in that vein, and all I can think is, dude: you are talking about a nineteenth-century Italian opera based on a seventeenth-century English play that isn't "about" Scottish history in any serious way, and you REALLY think that that heady medieval atmosphere is a VITAL part of the whole? I'm pretty darn sure you care about this FAR more than Shakespeare or Verdi would have.
Are costumes even part of the libretto? I doubt it, but in any event, changing the setting around is far from just throwing out the whole thing, and, I mean, saying that a changed setting means it's "not the opera" seems like a pretty radical statement. Plenty of people dislike modern Shakespeare adaptations, but I think few would go so far as to claim that they're not Shakespeare.
I don't know if Shakespeare cared that much about the effects and “machines” and costumes. Maybe not. Whereas I know for a fact that 18th-century French librettists/composers considered the costumes and stage directions and effects-work an essential part of the whole. It's not that the opera loses all artistic value, of course; but it's rather like how Homer or Virgil, were they alive, would be pretty dismayed that we're reading their works rather than hearing them being recited with musical accompaniment. With the difference that unlike chanted Ancient Greek, which would be of little interest to most people, a premiere-accurate rendition of an opera would still be a damn good show, so we have fewer excuses for so betraying the artistic vision.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, and back to the subject, I've asked the aforementioned expert mother about the "Louisiana desert" thing, and it turns out it's a case of Lost In Translation. For most of history, and up til the 18th century when Prevost wrote the original novel, "desert" in French didn't necessarily mean an empty sandy place; it just meant a large natural area that was deserted (of people). No dryness required. Medieval Christian legend is full of saints and hermits "in the desert" who by all appearances lived in the middle of the woods. This is the same thing: when Prevost speaks of a "desert" in Lousiana he probably means a forest or swamp, not the freaking Sahara.
(An addendum about that first part: obviously, it can be tricky to recreate the exact same production. But to be more realistic about this, I think a good rule of thumb would be for the director to strive not to do anything he thinks the original artists would have disapproved of.)
ReplyDeleteMan. I disagree with this on so many levels it's difficult for me to articulate them all, but let's make an effort.
ReplyDeleteYou "know for a fact" that composers felt a certain way, do you? So I assume this means they made statements to the effect of "this opera needs to be presented at this place in this way and any hypothetical future presenter who tries to set it years after I'm dead is RUINING it?" I think there's an awful lot of mind-reading and some serious inference going on here, given that we're allegedly following these guys' strict wishes. You haven't remotely proven that anyone would be upset by anachronistic productions. Still, let's get into it a little more...
You talk about "betraying artistic vision," but what does this actually MEAN, in practical terms? So: Carmen was originally set in the 1820s, but I saw a production set in the 1930s, which basically means slightly more modern costume. Okay, how does the 1820s setting inform Carmen and how is it changed by changing it? What would I get from the one that I wouldn't from the other? Thirty seconds, GO.
Okay, so that's an unanswerable question, which is kind of the point. If it's so vital that they stay in the same milieu, shouldn't it make some kind of difference if they don't? I'd like to think that the composers would be flattered to know that their works have persisted such that they're still performed, even if in a different context (and frankly, I'd be kind of amazed if they weren't), but if they're not, well...fuck 'em. They're dead; who cares what they think? No, seriously: why am I supposed to care? Because I don't, not even a tiny bit. Sometimes you're Virgil and you want the manuscript of the Aeneid burned on your death, sometimes you're Verdi and you don't want your operas to be set in a different century [citation very much needed]; you can't always get what you want. I mean, if I'm a historian, maybe I want to know how the original production was done, fair enough, but there's absolutely no reason to consider it sacrosanct.
Let me also point out that, for many obvious reasons, we are never able to experience a non-contemporary text the way its original consumers would have, such that this insistence would be basically meaningless even if the composers had signed notarized documents stipulating that their works ONLY be performed in this one way. If we can't experience them as originally intended anyway, why should we be required to keep them in this ever-more archaic milieu? I can think of no better way to make opera even less accessible to the general public than this insistence that no one ever do anything interesting with the productions because of some dim idea that guys who have been dead for hundreds of years wouldn't have wanted us to.
(You know, I can't think of any other place on the Internet we could be having this debate. Thank you again for existing, you and your blog!)
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not that I find the period setting to be the most crucial part, you understand. More the general aesthetic. And, I mean — I'm not denying that the music is probably the most important artistic element: but it's not the only one by far. There was artistry in the costumes and the stage directions and the lighting; the whole thing was a coherent whole. Think of it like — well — ballet. Surely you agree that we're losing something pretty important if all we ever see of Stravinski's Rite of Spring is the music, but no one ever performs it with the original dances and costumes anymore?…
Again, it's not that I'm opposed to occasional experimenting. It can be fun. But for many operas, and I find that really disheartening, watching it as the original artists intended isn't even an option anymore. And no matter how great and creative your remix is, it's just not fair to make it the only available version, over the original. Y'know?
…Oh, and any comments on the "desert" thing?
I think a key difference in our views on this matter is that you're looking at opera, theater, and so on as "performance art" as we now understand it in our post-Lumiere-Brothers world. Where the fact that no two performances are the same is part of the fun. Whereas I see plays and operas, written ones with precise stage directions and all, as their eras' best approximation of cinema; since they didn't have the option to actually record their finished play, they wrote down instructions in excruciating details and trusted future generations to be able to recreate it, like some of kind of organic DVD-players.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a trust we're betraying, by refusing to follow those instructions and instead pilfering what we like about the recordings and throwing out the rest.
It's obviously not quite that, but my feeling about "modernized" performances is that they're kind of equivalent to refusing to put the work into restoring an old black-and-white masterpiece because eh, it looks old-timey anyway, and instead remaking it in color and sound with new actors and throwing the old reels to the trash. It's not that the sheer idea of a remake is objectionable, or that the new actors aren't good (perhaps they're better!). But. Nevertheless.
You keep making this bare assertion that composers were just desperately concerned with their works always being performed in exactly the same way, but minus any kind of evidence, this is not an argument. They "trusted future generations to be able to recreate" their works? Come on; that's preposterous. Where are you getting this? If you have an actual quote from someone saying words to this effect, pony them up; otherwise, stop making the claim. I mean, assume that you're aware that composers were always revising and tinkering with their own works after the fact, to try to appeal more to popular taste, to reflect their own changing sensibilities, to avoid censors. Seems like an odd way to treat these Most Sacred Texts Passed Down From Above That Must Never Ever Be Changed.
ReplyDeleteI leave you with this, on the composition of Cavalleria rusticana:
Mascagni heard about the [opera-writing] competition only two months before the closing date and asked his friend Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, a poet and professor of literature at the Italian Royal Naval Academy in Livorno, to provide a libretto. Targioni-Tozzetti chose Cavalleria rusticana, a popular short story (and play) by Giovanni Verga, as the basis for the opera. He and his colleague Guido Menasci set about composing the libretto, sending it to Mascagni in fragments, sometimes only a few verses at a time on the back of a postcard. The opera was finally submitted on the last day that entries would be accepted.
Are you really going to try to claim with a straight face that this was written in "excruciating detail" by people concerned with posterity? Really, now. How is there even an argument here?
Da Ponte: Well done, Amadeus. Cosi fan tutte will be our biggest hit yet.
ReplyDeleteMozart: Thank you. There's just one thing that worries me...
Da Ponte: What's that?
Mozart: Well...what if several hundred years after we're both dead, someone produces it in a different setting?
Da Ponte: I'd never thought of that!
Mozart: It would be ruined! RUINED!
La Ponte: You're right. Hmmm...I know! I'll write excruciatingly detailed stage directions! That will send a clear, unambiguous message to future generations that they are never to do anything different or creative with our work!
Mozart: Lorenzo, you're a genius!
Well, sure, it sounds silly when you put it like that (well-joked as always, by the way). But my imaginary dialogue went something more like:
ReplyDeleteMozart: I just came back from a performance of our latest masterpiece…
Da Ponte: Such a beautiful composition, the perfect blend of music, storytelling, acting…
Mozart: Well, my music is the most important part. I'm the genius here, let's not forget. *Snifff*
Da Ponte: Of course you are, Amadeus, of course. Still. Rather fine piece of work. …You know — it's silly, but — I worry — is our art, the opera, not at a disadvantage compared to the painters' and poets'?
Mozart: How so?
Da Ponte: Their works are fixed. If they are kept safe and sound, they will live on and be admired for centuries, perhaps for millenia! Whereas we — the opera would not be what it is without the element of life, without the people there on the stage. Your music —
Mozart: —is excellent.
Da Ponte: Yes, Amadeus, of course it is, but though your music is written down, what of the rest? Eh? The opera, as a whole, the whole artpiece as we saw it tonight, is that to be lost to time? Never again seen?
Mozart: I see what you mean, Lorenzo, old boy. Well, don't worry. The libretto's all written down, isn't it? And we have engravings of the costumes and sets, and notes from the choregrapher. Perhaps it's more unwieldy than sheer sheet music, but I'm sure we can trust our descendants to follow our directions and so preserve our fleeting-looking work from the ravages of time. Eh?
Da Ponte: Perhaps, perhaps,… But I still wonder. Your music, which, yes, is wonderful; your music can't be hacked apart by future performers. It's too delicate a machinery to be tinkered with. But direction, costumes, all those things… Can I trust the director of the year 1800? 1900? 2000? You know how directors are. They think they know best. What if each of them decides our version is too old-fashioned? What if they feel they must put their personal stamp on what should be their duty of care to the work of their forebears? What then? All the written instructions would be for naught, if there's no one who cares to read them.
Mozart: Lorenzo, you depress me. Life is short anyway. Let's just enjoy it and not care about what will come to pass once we're dead and buried. Hm?
Da Ponte: Easy for you to say. Your music is immortal, no matter what.
Mozart: Why yes, yes it is.
Okay, but this is just pure fiction. I ask again: do you have any ACTUAL EVIDENCE that people thought that way? The fact that there were detailed set and costume descriptions seems to be evidence that...they had an idea how they wanted THIS production to be, NOW, not that they thought all productions into eternity had to be exactly the same.
ReplyDelete