While he's surely not the wordsmith his daughter is, Maestro Lorin Maazel still has a thing or three to say about today's opera. And where else should a venerable conductor's trio of diatribes be published nowadays?
That's right, you guessed it...Facebook.
In this last installment--reprinted below in its entirety--Maazel tells us the best way to, umm, protect the opera. 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:
What can be done to safeguard an endangered art form?
If it is believed that an opera audience can be cowed into tolerating any abuse of text and music for fear of seeming to be old-fashioned, conservative, recidivist (who wants to be thought of as not with it, not up to speed, uncool), the manipulators, axe-grinders and mafiosi, given a free hand, cheerfully assault the art form.
One of the challenges for an opera house general manager is to sell out the house. The ultimate say-so rests with the audience. If their beloved world of opera is being degraded and ridiculed (not too long ago, a stage director who publicly derided the art form of opera staged one with the cast dressed as monkeys), what to do? Boo? Certainly not. The singers and musicians do their best under trying circumstances, and their work should be respected.
What then?
Follow the example of a gentleman who, after the first act of a Shakespeare play presented at an international festival (directed by someone who proudly said he had never read one and engaged non-professionals to "act"), stood up and said in a ringing voice: "George, let's go." All but 30 people left the theater.
You won't get your money back, but if the general manager reads on Facebook often enough that the opera house he/she is managing is losing its audience, he/she will soon change course.
Another suggested action is pre-emptive in nature: If you read that a new production at your favorite opera house will be given of La Boheme set in a Nepalese fish market with the Sex Pistols in the orchestra pit conducted by Sarah Palin, don't go.
-- Lorin Maazel
Once more, be sure to 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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