There is no going back. The new century has consolidated the paradigm that introduced the so-called regietheater in German opera, that is to say, the modern practice of leaving freedom to the director to devise the way to stage a title. The stage management has, finally, in the great lyrical coliseums, the same importance as the baton and the singers. And it arouses as much or more anticipation, which has led to notable names in theater, cinema or even the visual arts wanting to participate.
The late Gerard Mortier was the one who widened this horizon by inoculating an unexplored desire in many artists who, against all odds, would end up working more for the opera than for the theatre. Arising from Catalonia there are three paradigmatic cases of theater artists who are poured into the coliseums: the desired Calixto Bieito, who has just premiered at the Paris Opera his production of Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel at the request of the composer Thomas Adès, and the most active members of LaFura dels Baus, Àlex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa, who, each in their own style, today turn their concerns into this form of musical theatre.
The ranking of the most wanted by opera houses would be headed by historical figures such as Peter Sellars or Bob Wilson. The latter - who is currently preparing El Messiah at the Liceu - answers the question why he is so fascinated by acting and 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, being stopped on stage is different from being stopped at a bus stop. Or sing on stage or sing in the shower. The stage is a form that brings us together beyond our differences. In this sense, it has an unequivocal function in society", the Texan playwright who revolutionized New York in the seventies replies to La Vanguardia.
Romeo Castellucci, to whom La Monnaie has commissioned a Wagner Tetralogy that will later be seen in Barcelona, is another one 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 or Stefan Herheim dominate opera direction and represent a wide range of trends and stylistic approaches to the genre: from the most psychological approach to the aesthete, the monumentalist, the symbolist, the conceptual...
What makes them important is knowing how to read what the works express and make them accessible to today's public through their own language. Imposing your language regardless of what the works express is something mediocre, and it is what has created quite a few frictions with the public and with the singers themselves.
"Stage direction is fundamental because it allows access to the meaning of the work, even though, so often, the original code and iconography of the work have lost the expressive capacity it had when it was composed", says Joan Matabosch , artistic director of the Real and key manager in the paradigm shift in Spanish theatres. "Text, music, dramaturgy, scenography, costumes, lighting, gesture... the various materials of the opera must be adapted 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 the meaning of the work is enhanced and made accessible. But beware!: I am not talking about the literalness of the work, but what this 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, understand it, trivialize it. And that instead certain changes are relevant to understand what the work is telling us", he adds.
The theater must have the intelligence to entrust those artists with 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's not the movie, it's the performance of the movie, and it's performed by singers who have nothing to do with the actors. In addition, it is another language". However, the plot remains that of the filmmaker's absurdity: a group of people locked in a space from which they believe they cannot get out. Only here they are people from the audience of an opera who later celebrate a dinner with the diva. "They are afraid to go out, but they can. I don't know why I close them, there are many possible interpretations that I leave to the public to discover".
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 he transfer this footprint he left to the singers? "I let the subconscious appear, let it flow. That's why you need to be calm, have their trust so that they do this exercise, so that it doesn't become something rational of the theater of the 19th century. Realism 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. And I also expect it from the singers, I want them to open their minds and go in search of the character", he explains. For German, music, singing and acting need work to connect. That's why he gets frustrated when, when reviewing the piece with piano at the beginning, some performer refuses to sing at full voice. "They don't understand that everything goes together, it's a misunderstanding that you have to fight against."
The period translation that is practiced in many stagings to bring them up to date aroused, years ago, the audience's rejection. However, the arguments are getting stronger. Deborah Warner, for example, indicated when she staged Peter Grimes at the Teatro Real that when poverty is a crucial part of the story, “recreating it a few centuries back allows you to display attractive period costumes, but you can fall into sentimentality -la: I prefer to shed light directly on the material in the present," he said.
Normalizing this contemporaneization of operas would not have been possible without the complicity and commitment of theater artistic directors. "As of now, there are only Serge Dorny left at the Bayerische de Munich, Peter Decaluwe at La Monaie, Joan Matabosch at the Real and a Liceu de les Arts that has understood the importance of the rereading of the opera so that the public can see reflected", says Àlex Ollé. "Understanding the composer and librettist in his time means giving the keys to reinterpreting his piece, since religion does not mean the same today as in romanticism, nor can you take a Shostakovich who criticized Stalinism in which he lived [ The Nose or the impending Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk ] if you don't turn it on its head so that it speaks of a society in decay. They are concepts that transcend time", explains Ollé.
Carlus Padrissa, who was introduced to ritual and opera when he was 4 or 5 years old while attending school 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 50 minutes of mass. "I feel at home creating underworlds", he explains while preparing a Carmen in which the cigar girl is a slave to the manufacture of sportswear and her bullfighter is a footballer, "goleadooor". "My worlds are a bit monstrous, like Goya's dream of reason, and I pour them into the multidisciplinary world of La Fura, with the right audience, participating in the carnival," he explains.
There are fewer and fewer artists reluctant to these adventures. And the public is also more clear about what is and what is not whistleable. When in the 1990s Germany experienced this regietheatre renewal, the discussions among the audience provoked an exciting reflection on what is expected of an opera. "It is at this 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, on the one hand, respectful of the work and, on the other, moving the audience. Opera houses are not museums, they are mediators to build judgment and opinion from beauty, ugliness, constant stimulation... And we cannot contain the imagination, although the risk sometimes leads to intelligent gestures excessive intellectuals The debate is to discover or rediscover. And we need to push to make it easier so that the opera doesn't fall apart like a snowball in our hands."
