Cue the Tenor
So, the wonderful Serbian film director Emir Kusterica’s new opera Time of the Gypsies (based on his zany film of the same name) opened last night in Paris. Woody Allen is directing Puccini and David Cronenberg is prepping The Fly for L.A. Anthony Minghella, Michael Haneke, Zhang Yimou. What is happening here? Have we run out of opera directors? Have film directors done operas in the past? Are opera companies just hoping that a high profile director can pack the seats?
A lot of established opera directors seem to have absolutely no idea what they’re doing, so why not hand over the reins to people who have experience making images and telling stories? Minghella’s Butterfly was one of the loveliest productions in recent memory. Eisenstein and Bergman directed opera back in the day. Tarkovsky’s “Boris” was astounding. Werner Herzog, William Friedkin, Istvan Szabo, Volker Schlöndorff, Peter Greenaway, and Andrei Konchalovsky have directed opera semi-regularly. I’m still hoping for that Peter Jackson “Ring.”
I hear nuh-thing. I see nuh-thing. 😉
Spike Lee directing Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski’s 1951 comedy-drama, Stalag 17? Why not?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/theater/27spike.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin
*
Maybe Gerard Mortier will commission Ludovico Einaudi to turn Stalag 17 into his first NYCO world premiere?
“What is happening here?”
Film directors and screenwriters might be on to something that composers AND librettists were once privy to …
What’s new here is that Kusterica is not simply directing an existing opera, but creating a new one, taking the role that has been the composer’s in the past. It’s a radical shift in the process. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but not anything close to business as usual.
Franco Zeffirelli comes to mind, and Bergman made a film of “The Magic Flute.” There’s always room for a new perspective in staging and design.