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Modernized Opera Staging and Productions

The information opera staging communicates assists an audience’s experience. Understanding a director or scenic designer’s reasons for the abstraction and or modernization is very informative and helpful. The perspective of the stage director to make sure the audience can also relate is just as helpful. In an interview with Staging Director Omer Ben Seadia, she mentions the idea of finding a “hook.” She also mentions, “I need to find a way to make it seem like you can relate to it; as we’re looking, as we’re watching it immediately. Not intellectually, not after reading the program notes, not having to study the piece but just for the audience sitting down carte blanche, having done no research and no past experience…”

The audience’s initial response can affect the reception of the opera. The relevance of an audience being able to relate to an opera’s staging is similar to that of a popular song on a radio station: there is something the song’s audience feels they can sympathize with, whether it be a time in history, a feeling, or a particular situation. The feeling of relating, in this case, needs to be instant. Ben Seadia’s idea also is the instantaneous ability to relate as soon as possible as to not lose the audience’s attention.

The intricate reasons for varying staging ideas explains why a director or scenic designer decides what they will in staging and creating a more abstract or modern take on an opera. In an episode of Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design, Es Devlin, Stage Director has the most influential thing to say on the subject of production ideas: "It’s not necessary for the audience to know every detail; it’s actually more helpful to create an object that for everybody has meaning. For example: how you feel in a tunnel… I think there are just these absolutely basic atavistic primal responses we all have to being in a dark curved tunnel space. So, I do think, on everybody there’s a… an emotional response to that. But the things I create aren’t the things; they are the time that the people at shows spend in the company of the things. So, it’s time that you’re making really."

In this particular situation in the Abstract: The Art of Design episode, in this section of the episode, Devlin is speaking on a production of Parsifal at the Royal Danish Opera in 2012. In this particular production of Parsifal, the main set piece is an oversized chess rook which revolves, in which characters can walk around in. Devlin’s explanation of the “basic atavistic primal responses we all have to being in a dark curved tunnel space” is the relation to the audience, in that the story of Parsifal as well as the audience can relate to each other very seamlessly. Her use of light, darkness, time, space, and other factors set her designs apart from those who solely chose to challenge for popularity. Devlin executes abstraction and modernization beautifully with her set designs. When a viewer receives a guide to the particular production, reads about the director or scenic designer, or is open minded to seeing various takes on one opera, the experience can prove to be more enjoyable. Furthermore, some audience members may like a performance more if they know more about the director or company’s reasons behind the modernization and or abstraction.

In another perspective on modernization and abstraction in opera companies, Milwaukee Opera Theatre holds some unconventional weight on the subject. The history of Milwaukee Opera Theatre, since Jill Anna Ponasik has been at the helm, has been what she has referred to commonly as a micro-brewery: there are various tastes for each person, but still from a small company. Milwaukee Opera Theatre is a company that does not have one home for an office or performance space but is rather nomadic, successfully. A few examples of abstraction and modernization in their opera productions are as follows:


 * Zie Magic Flute: the production was done in the round with a roller skating Papagena (bird woman), with Pamina (heroine, love interest) wearing jeans and a more or less gender-non-specific shirt and vest resembling that of which would have been worn by a man in the time the opera takes place, giving Pamina the heroine stance rather than the damsel in distress. Some words were in English and some in the original German. The music score reduction was for flute, cello, and piano.


 * Candide: performed in classrooms, with the audience in seats such as would be in a classroom or recital, the performance taking place around the audience. Most characters would pick props up from laundry hampers brought on at the start of the Operetta. All characters were in jeans, K-mart sneakers that all looked alike, and black t-shirts (principle roles had their names on the shirts). These allowed the cast to move around easily, whether crawling on the floor, sprawling on a large desk, or whatever other challenges the classrooms yielded.


 * Ruddigore: MOT paired down the music to mostly a capella with a few instruments from time to time, including one character occasionally playing the accordion, an instrument not in the original score; a more silent film sort of feel to the opera with not a lot of silence.

Some of MOT’s staging ideas were deemed necessary because of the limited locations, others because of lesser funds to work with, others because it was simply decided to do so that way. In an interview with Ponasik, the artistic director of Milwaukee Opera Theatre, Ponasik was asked how MOT decides what to keep more traditional and what to change and why. Below is an excerpt of her response:

"So, you’re dancing between different ways of addressing the question of faithfulness,… to the score. So, in some ways you’re embracing what feels useful and that which you can accomplish in terms of what’s laid out in the score as written, but also keeping in mind, how did they want this to sit with their audiences and is there a way that we can more accurately create that for a contemporary audience where if we just do it to the letter, it’s not going to have the impact that they intended?… The funding for the arts has changed, the world has changed around these pieces, demographically, politically; when we take a look at them now, again, it’s like a… different way of asking a question of faithfulness, but, how can we realize this piece and realize the value in this piece with the resources available to us today in the world that we live in today, right? And so that means grappling with all kinds of issues whether it’s a Moorish character like Monosatos in The Magic Flute or whether it’s issues of a gigantic chorus and an enormous orchestra that are financially less feasible than they might once have been."

Ponasik’s mention of faithfulness is summarized as such: to decipher whether to stage something traditionally or to challenge the tradition given circumstances of where opera is being performed, budget, interests of the audience, etc. Her mention of politics and demographics is also a different issue than it may have been when some of these operas were written.

Another situation relevant to abstraction and modernization in opera is a segment from a Youtube video of the opera Les Indes Galantes, by Jean-Philippe Rameau. The success of this clip has skyrocketed in social media platforms, with 358,715 views as of Monday, March 23, 2020. In this clip, the chorus, along with dancers, is responding with movements related to hip hop and reactions that, character-wise, match that of people observing a dance-off and its surrounding crowd. According to an article in The New York Times:

"A couple of years ago, Mr. Cogitore [director] produced a short film for the Paris Opera that set a surging mass of krump dancers loose on a bit of music from “Les Indes Galantes,” one of the Baroque “opéra-ballets” that combine loosely plotted sung narrative and lavish dance sequences. The six-minute video was such a hit that the company offered him a production of the full work… The libretto may not break the toxicity meter, but it is uncomfortably populated by stereotypes, with colonial order valorized as the peaceable solution to a world out of joint. Something must be done with a work whose final act is called “The Savages.”"

In a thesis by Susan Dahlberg entitled “The Effect of Contemporary Programming on Opera Company Box-Offices.” she claims: "Opera is the most expensive of all the art forms to produce. Income from the box-office is very important to the survival of each opera company, more so in the United States than in Europe. Many administrators are loath to experiment with programming twentieth-century works or little-known works and prefer to program traditional operas which will be more sure to attract an audience."

Such are the issues and challenges faced by opera houses that either keeps them programming more traditional works and productions of the operas or starting to modernize and abstract to bring in more audience members. When opera companies do not have a way to relate to the audience, the audience decreases, the sponsors decrease, the funding overall decreases as companies supplying grants do not see as much money going into support of the companies, and these opera companies slowly dwindle into nonexistence if something does not change.

The issue, according to a review of The Crafty Art of Opera: For Those Who Make It, Love It, or Hate It by stage director Michael Hampe, is the following: "The difference between ‘just’ music and music for a purpose is not always clear in opera… Some people think they are making music, whereas in reality they’re making music for a purpose. And even critics are often unclear about it. They judge an opera on musical, aesthetic or historical criteria… namely the truthfulness of the music on the stage and, accordingly, its usefulness."

When too many reviews from a given opera company give the impression that the company does not care what its viewers think, the company suffers greatly. When an opera company takes too many risks to challenge the more regular roster of operas performed with specific companies and ideas in the past, the company suffers. One such example of a company which suffered for a moment was Skylight Music Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Skylight had seen huge success in its productions when doing the more traditional operas and operettas, doing at least one Gilbert and Sullivan operetta a year. It had continued this success until the last six or so years ago, when the reigning artistic director chose to leave his post for a different opportunity, and a newer, younger artistic director had new ideas which had worked for his smaller company in Texas. One such production this newer artistic director chose to update was Fidelio by Ludwig van Beethoven. This new artistic director went through all the promotional and educational work to explain his reasons for inserting Bollywood aspects into the production. In this case, these Bollywood aspects were the dance moves of Bollywood and some of the clothing choices. Unfortunately, Milwaukee’s Skylight audiences were not as receptive as the Indian royalty that attended the opening of the show. Those closer to the artistic director agreed with his choices and appreciated the production, but the opera conservatives of the Milwaukee community did not appreciate the changes as much. The end result of opera companies depend on the audience – and how familiar with change the audience is – or whether traditional staging and production ideas have been the norm. For Skylight, change of convention or tradition was not effective.

Milwaukee Opera Theatre, however, has never, to Ponasik’s recollection, ever had anyone complain about their choices for her much smaller company’s production ideas. Referring back to MOT’s Candide, Ponasik explained that the production was meant to have been on a big stage, with a build classroom set, renting performance space at the Skylight Cabot Theatre, the larger of the two theatre spaces at Skylight’s building, the Broadway Theatre Center. However, the original director who wanted this larger audience and set had a different opportunity arise and Ponasik and the rest of the board were left to decide whether they would take Candide off the season or continue in its production. Thankfully, MOT decided to revert to the classroom but in actual classrooms rather than a set on an opera house stage. The desired effect of choosing to take the show to schools and universities was a total success, selling out almost every performance, with multiple seasoned opera goers appreciating the performances in the classrooms, including the Dean of Arts and Sciences at UW-Parkside, in Kenosha,Wisconsin, who thought it should always be performed with this intimate, immersive feeling to it.

The opera companies that educate audiences with outreach, promotional interviews explaining newer ideas, and meetups with sponsors help the success of change when in more traditional markets. When no education on newer changes occurs, the companies face a fallout and may not survive unless something is done quickly to fix their issues. With the help of both the audience and those behind the scenes of the operas, the community of those who appreciate abstraction and modernization can thrive. If there is valid reason for the change, all the better the opera experience may be for the audience. Education and perception are key to allowing opera – modern, abstract, or traditional – to survive. The willingness to explore is pandora’s box.