Unfortunately, Maestro Lorin Maazel just isn't the wordsmith that his daughter Fiona is. (In fact, for Fiona's grammatical sake, we've corrected some of Lorin's more egregious errors below.)
All the same, Father Maazel still has a thing or two (or three) to say about opera today. And in a sign o' the times, where else would a venerable conductor's trio of diatribes be published?
Yep, you guessed right: Facebook. If ever anything there could be considered required reading, Lorin Maazel's tripartite "Opera Staging Madness" is indeed one of those thing(s).
In this, his second idiosyncratic installment, Maazel gets, err, more specific. Be it Venezuelan prostitutes or waitresses in Southern California, Classicalite's sure you'll "like" what follows:
In Part One of my comment regarding the philistinism of some present day opera staging concepts, I wrote: "The roles of both stage director and conductor are essentially custodial." "Custodial" challenges do not restrict the fantasy of stage and music director.
Two examples: the first, Giorgio Strehler's 1980 production at La Scala of Verdi's Falstaff...end of Scene Four when a gigantic laundry basket, presumably containing Falstaff hiding and suffocating inside, is dumped over a restraining barrier into the River Thames.
In a whimsical stroke of staging genius, Giorgio had a huge wave wash over the stage three seconds after the laundry basket "hit" the river! (Nevermind that during at least one performance, the water flowed over the raked stage into the orchestra pit!) Sheer staging heaven, this! No need to turn Shakespeare's jocund reveler Falstaff into a retired sumo wrestler at a Caracas brothel.
The second example: Keita Asari's now legendary staging in 1986 at La Scala of Madame Butterfly. About an hour before the opera began, a Japanese country-style house could be seen being "constructed" authentically block-by-block, rock garden and all. At precisely 7 p.m., the lights dimmed, the conductor (me at the time) walked out, bowed and gave the downbeat.
The audience has been imperceptibly drawn into the timelessness of an ancient culture. Cio-Cio San's suicide was staged with a delicacy that brought tears to my eyes at every performance: no disembowelment, simply a gentle poke of her fan, which seemed to release a vermilion carpet that slowly unravelled over 20 feet of stage...her life's blood.
Now THAT'S staging genius.
No need to desecrate the refinement of a tender soul in a fragile, ancient culture--and given soul-life by Puccini--by casting Butterfly as a hash-slinger in a San Diego diner.
-- Lorin Maazel
Come back tomorrow, when Classicalite will post the third and final installment of Maestro Lorin Maazel's Facebook polemic. Until then, 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 horse farm in central Virginia.
