Details on Bard's Taneyev Oresteia

[edurban]

Not sure if this is on sale yet.  The Strassberger production will probably be distracting/overactive, but it's better than nothing (as were his Huguenots and Le roi in varying degrees.)  From the Bard website:

http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=117644&utm_source=02.06.2013+Bard+SummerScape+2013+Season+Preview&utm_campaign=Jan+6+Eblast&utm_medium=email

David

[Amphissa]

I would be ordering tickets immediately, if I still lived in NYC. I would love to see this performance.

Having never attended anything at Bard, I'm curious about their approach to opera. Have they been infected with the Eurotrash staging bug, or are they still inclined to do traditional historic settings? I cringe at the thought of the Oresteia set in some bleak dystopian future of leather and cyborgs, or a 1930s depression era tenement house, or a circus complete with clown costumes. If we are going to have gratuitous nudity, let it be with togas and sandals, not sweaty greasyworkers in a factory, aight!

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Do not over-exercise the imagination otherwise you'll dream up an even more unpalatable scenario!

The really important thing is that this opera is being performed...and I keep all fingers (and toes) tightly crossed that these performances might lead to a decent recording. That would be a wonderful thing.

[eschiss1]

hrm. Well, there may be information available online about past (non-concert) Bard Festival opera productions and past Strassberger-directed opera productions, and how they turned out individually...

[edurban]

Here's a link to the NY Times' review of Le roi malgre lui (with a picture):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/arts/music/le-roi-malgre-lui-at-fisher-center-for-the-performing-arts.html?_r=0

The Times' review of Strassberger's Huguenots hardly mentioned the staging at all.  But this excerpt from the review on the Opera Today site certainly did (and I concur):

"...The staging was by Thaddeus Strassberger, whose wrangle with the challenges of fitting it in the Sosnoff's small but technically proficient stage was by turns inventive and perverse. The theme wasn't exactly modern dress, but it was difficult to be sure what period it was set in — the women wore something old and bulky, the men something modern, the dancers something scanty. The Pré-aux-Clercs scene of Act III, set in a field near the Seine where Huguenots (forbidden to worship in churches) are holding a Sunday service beside the convent in which Nevers is marrying Valentine, was placed by Strassberger under the steel piers that support the elevated portions of the Paris Métro — far from bucolic or Renaissance, but intriguing for its echo of the nave of some great cathedral. The plot for massacre in Act IV filled a claustrophobic square of black leather chairs — and the sides of the set drew back when the conspiratorial chorus came to join in for the Oath. Indeed, the best of Strassberger's work was his use of the great wooden panels that front the Sosnoff stage to segment the scene into smaller tableaux, allowing us to see what Raoul spies (and misinterprets) of Nevers and Valentine in Act I, or to give us a narrow glimpse of Marguerite's ball in Act V.

But what beefs me, what gets me to want this guy barred from the opera house, is his lack of faith in the music. Naked wrestlers at a men's stag party (while they sing of women and wine) — okay; but must they wrestle when Marcel is singing his great aria? If you know the piece, you'll know enough to ignore the busyness upstage, but this is a piece strange to most of the audience. The eye will be caught, the ear will ignore. If Mr. Volpe were Pol Plançon, he'd refuse to sing until the wrestlers were canned, but nowadays singers don't do that. The Oath of the Swords in Act IV, one of the great moments of Parisian opera, a scene that seldom fails to send chills by purely musical means, failed to chill on this occasion because of the bleeding naked fellow being attached to a chain in the middle (why? Do politicians usually have scenic tableaux while making top-secret backroom plans?) and the chorus dragging huge crosses across the stage. Yes — we get it — but we would get it from the music, if you'd let us listen to it. The great Act IV duet, a noble piece much admired by — yes — Wagner (and wittily parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan in The Pirates of Penzance — they knew their Meyerbeer, too), was building beautifully in its tight space from the ardent throats of Mr. Spyres and Mme. Deshorties, but Strassberger, musically oblivious, abruptly had his soprano disrobe so the tenor could demonstrate his ardor (was this the time, I ask you? with a massacre to prevent?) by singing a stanza while between her legs. You could enjoy the music anyway — but if you have to shut your eyes to take pleasure in an opera, why are we spending money on a stage director? Strassberger is of the school that believes music is the last thing anyone cares about in the opera house. If Botstein wants to give an obscure work a chance — a noble aim — can't he find a team that believes the piece is worth it?

John Yohalem..."

[eschiss1]

*still surprised that people are surprised that Meyerbeer influenced Wagner, but ... ok, that sentence just looks weird.*

[TerraEpon]

Well, someone (Schumann?) said that Rienzi was "Mayerbeer's best opera", or some such.

[eschiss1]

von Bülow, according to Wikipedia.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Of course! The comment has got exactly von Bulow's cutting wit. On reading Alan Walker's biography I was delighted by witticism after witticism. Sometimes extremely funny, and nearly always spot on right (unlike Shaw where you just get tired of his prejudicial rants).

[scottevan]

>Having never attended anything at Bard, I'm curious about their approach to opera. Have they been infected with the Eurotrash staging bug, or are they still inclined to do traditional historic settings?

I've been to nearly all of the operas staged at Bard College's summer music festival series. While I haven't always liked the staging (I essentially agree with Opera Today's review of how distracting the onstage action of "Huguenots" could be during the key musical moments) I've always found the musical end of things -- singers, orchestra, conducting -- to be professional, polished and sometimes downright thrilling. I wouldn't call any of it "traditional," but that's a difficult call to make when they are being given their North American staged premieres, as most of these works claim to be.

Though I musically gravitate much more toward Meyerbeer than Franz Schrecker, I thought Strassberger's staging of the latter's "Der Ferne Klang" a more cohesive, interesting and involving production, overall, than his take on "Huguenots."  The Schrecker work is a noir-ish journey inside the mind of a struggling composer caught up in the political and cultural clashes of the early 20th century. The direction took us step by step inside the soul of the main character, most effectively in a Weimar-era bordello that resembled a carousel made up of enormous mirrors.  Traditional, maybe not, but it certainly had a consistent vision to it.  For Meyerbeer, however, where the intrigues and religious politics of 16th century France are such an important part of the story, a traditional staging would have served the story much better. I was lucky enough to have seen one, in the late 70's, staged with modest but very effective resources at UCLA, under the direction of Jan Popper. That performance alone was enough to launch me on an operatic journey that has continued to this day.

While it was kind of a crazy quilt, I very much enjoyed last year's Bard Festival offering, Chabrier's "Le Roi Malgre Lui," also directed by Strassberger. He threw together 18th century French, 1930's Hollywood, traditional Polish costumes, even a reality show-like TV broadcast into this production, and by some miracle it all made sense in the convoluted, at times nonsensical libretto that Chabrier had to work with, one of the greatest discrepancies between sublime music and trivial plots that you're likely to encounter outside of Schubert.

Schumann's very much unsung "Genoveva" was the first of the operatic works I saw staged at Bard. While not directed by Strassberger, but by the young Danish director Kasper Bech Holten, it was good enough in all respects to keep me coming back each summer. It was a thrill to be in the audience for opening night of the first fully staged North American performance of Schumann's only opera, an imperfect but still compelling work (dramatically, as well as musically) that really deserves much more than it has received.

So yes, the simple fact that these unsung works are being given professional, fully staged performances in a theater (the Fisher Center) that is an acoustic wonder is more than reason enough to go.

>Not sure if this is on sale yet. 

Yes, tickets are now available for Tanayev's "Oresteia."  You can bet I'll be there!