There is no turning back now. The new century has consolidated the paradigm introduced in German opera by the so-called regietheater, that is, the modern practice of leaving the director free to devise the way to stage a title. Stage direction has, finally, in the great lyrical coliseums, equal importance to the baton and the singers. And it arouses as much or more expectation, which has made well-known names in theater, cinema or even the visual arts want to participate.
The late Gerard Mortier was the one who widened that ban by inoculating an unexplored desire in many artists who, against all odds, would end up working more for opera than for theater. Emerging from Catalonia there are three paradigmatic cases of theater artists who live above all in lyrical coliseums: the desired Calixto Bieito, who has just premiered his production of Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel at the Paris Opera at the request of composer Thomas Adès, and the most active members of La Fura dels Baus, Àlex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa, who, each in their own style, today pour their concerns into this form of musical theater.
The ranking of the most sought after by opera houses would be headed by historical figures such as Peter Sellars or Bob Wilson. The latter, who is preparing The Messiah at the Liceu, answers the question of why stage directors are so fascinated by acting singing.
“The theater is a space like no other. The light is different. The way you walk. The way you love. The way you talk and sing. Because you are on stage. For me, standing on stage is different from standing at a bus stop. Or sing on stage or sing in the shower. The stage is a way that brings us together beyond our differences. In this sense it has a univocal function in society,” responds the Texan who revolutionized New York in the seventies.
Romeo Castellucci, from whom La Monnaie has commissioned a Wagner Tetralogy that will later be seen in Barcelona, is another of those highly desired. But the list is long: Dmitri Tcherniakov, Deborah Warner, Barrie Kosky, Laurent Pelly, Claus Guth, Robert Carsen, David McVicar, Katie Mitchell, David Alden, Damiano Michieletto and Stefan Herheim dominate the opera regalia and represent a wide range of trends and stylistic approaches to the genre: from the psychological approach to the aesthete, the monumentalist, the symbolist, the conceptual...
What makes them great is knowing how to read what the works express and make it accessible to the current public through their own language. Imposing their language regardless of what the works express is a mediocre thing, and it is what has created quite a bit of friction with the public and the singers themselves.
“Stage direction is essential because it allows access to the meaning of the work, even though, so many times, the original code and iconography of the work have lost the expressive capacity they had when it was composed,” says Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Real and key manager in the paradigm shift in Spanish theaters.
“Text, music, dramaturgy, scenery, costumes, lighting, gesture… the various materials of the opera must adapt to the meaning of the work. The important thing is not whether the staging is modern or classic, literal, with or without period changes, but simply whether it enhances and makes accessible the meaning of the work. But be careful!: I am not talking about the literality of the work but rather what that literality expresses. That's why we need an artist to interpret it. And that is why some literal productions can be deeply hostile to the work and manage to blur it, tarnish it, trivialize it. And on the other hand, certain changes are relevant to understanding what the work is telling us,” he assures.
The theater must have the intelligence to commission these artists to produce works that can be expressed according to their style. Although sometimes the composer gets ahead of them. This is the case of Thomas Adès, who wanted Bieito to mount his Exterminating Angel. “No one can come expecting to see Buñuel's film,” says Bieito on the phone; It is the interpretation of the film, and it is performed by singers who have nothing to do with the actors. Furthermore, it is another language.”
However, the plot continues to be that of the filmmaker's absurdity: a group of people locked in a space from which they believe they cannot leave. Only here they are part of the audience at an opera that later has a dinner with the diva. “They are afraid to go out, but they can. I don't know why I lock them in, there are many possible interpretations that I leave to the public to discover,” adds Bieito.
Both he and Adès saw the film when they were 11 or 12 years old. Buñuel is, he says, “an important line in my life.” How does this impact transfer to the singers? “I let the subconscious appear, let it flow. For that you have to be calm, have their trust so that they do this exercise, so that it does not become something rational in 19th century theater. Reality is one thing and realism is another.”
Like Bieito, Christof Loy also works on each title based on the performers. “My work style is based on empathy. I also expect it from the singers, I want them to open their minds and go look for the character,” he points out. For the German, music, singing and acting require connected work. Hence, he gets frustrated when, when going through the piano piece at the beginning, a performer refuses to sing at full voice. “They don't understand that everything goes together, it's a misunderstanding that we have to fight against.”
The period translation that is practiced in many stagings to update them aroused, from the outset, the rejection of the public. However, the arguments are becoming stronger. Deborah Warner, for example, indicated when putting on Peter Grimes at the Real that when poverty is a crucial part of the story, “recreating it a few centuries ago allows you to display attractive period costumes, but you can fall into romanticizing it: I prefer to shed light directly on the material in the present.”
Normalizing this contemporaryization of operas would not have been possible without the complicity and commitment of theater artistic directors. “Today there are Serge Dorny at the Bayerische in Munich, Peter Decaluwe at La Monaie, Joan Matabosch at the Real and a Liceu de les Arts that has understood the importance of rereading the opera so that the public can see themselves reflected” , says Àlex Ollé.
“Understanding the composer and librettist in his time means giving the keys to reinterpret his piece, since religion does not mean the same today as it did in romanticism, nor can you take a Shostakovich who criticized the Stalinism in which he lived [La Nariz o his imminent Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk ] if you don't turn it around so that it talks about a society in decline. They are concepts that transcend time,” adds the one who is an artist in residence at the Liceu.
Carlus Padrissa, who was introduced to ritual and opera when he was 4 or 5 years old as an altar boy in Moià, the town of tenor Francesc Viñas, naturally applies his unstoppable imagination to opera, the same one that assaulted him as a child during the 1950s. minutes of mass. “I feel at home creating underworlds,” he says while preparing a Carmen in which the cigarette maker is a slave to making sportswear and his bullfighter is a soccer player, “goaled.” “My worlds are a little monstrous, like Goya's dream of reason, and I turn them into the multidisciplinary world of La Fura, with the public standing and participating in the carnival.”
Fewer and fewer artists are reluctant to these adventures. And the public is also clearer about what is and is not booable. When Germany experienced this renewal of the regietheatre in the 1990s, discussions among the public sparked an exciting reflection on what to expect from an opera. “It is at that moment when it becomes clear that opera transcends mere entertainment,” says Víctor García de Gomar, artistic director of the Liceu.
“The clash of visions is stimulating and raises questions about how to keep opera as a living genre while being respectful of the work on the one hand and moving the audience on the other. Opera theaters are not museums, they are mediators to build criteria and opinion from beauty, ugliness, constant stimulation... And we cannot contain our imagination, although the risk sometimes leads to excessive intellectual gesticulations. The debate is discovering or rediscovering. And we have to push to ensure that the opera does not fall apart like a snowball in our hands.”
