While he's not quite the wordsmith that his daughter Fiona is, Maestro Lorin Maazel still has a thing (or three) to say about opera today. And in a sign of the times, where else would the venerable conductor's trio of diatribes be published?
Yup, you guessed it: Facebook.
In this first installment--reprinted below in its entirety--Maazel gives us the correct definition of opera, itself, alongside the roles the composer, librettist, conductor, director and the actors should be playing. If ever anything on Facebook could be considered required reading, Lorin Maazel's tripartite "Opera Staging Madness" is indeed one of those thing(s).
In other words, we're sure you'll "like" what follows:
A great number of opera lovers are becoming increasingly alienated from an art form that has nourished the spirits and minds generations of people...opera: the ultimate fusion of song and sound, of word and fancy, a visceral corporal soul language second to none in breadth and depth of thought and emotion.
At the risk of stating the obvious, of postulating the pedestrian, may I approach the subject of the staging and musical interpretation of an opera applying logic and common sense?
An opera is a Gesamtkunstwerk, i.e. a " total art work; an artistic creation, that synthesizes the elements of music, drama, spectacle, dance, language, social mores, dress, body language " and all other aspects at any given moment of the recounted story as it is set to music.
The librettist tells the story, sets it in a time period, in a cultural and social context. The composer finds the appropriate sounds, turn of phrase, thematic material to project his/her interpretation of the emotions engendered by the story. The stage director's task to flesh out in a convincing manner the essential thrust of the story as interpreted by the composer. The conductor's task is to bring to life the implications of the music in a meaningful and vibrant way.
The roles of both stage director and conductor are essentially custodial, bringing into play only those actions which heighten and make clearer the intentions of librettist and composer, actions which at every turn must respect and honor the librettist and the composer. To do otherwise is to pervert and despoil the work of masters. The egos of stage director and conductor (and his/her psychological problems) are never ever to come into play.
An opera stage is not a psychiatrist's couch.
-- Lorin Maazel
Come back later this week, as Classicalite will be running the second and third installments of Maestro Lorin Maazel's Facebook polemic. Until then, check out the programming for the fifth season of Maazel's Castleton Festival--opening July 6 on the grounds of the Maestro's Virginia horse farm.
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