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Nov. 19th, 2008 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
polutropeI saw La damnation de Faust last night at the Met. As one would know if one read the Times arts section all the time, they have a new production, with video screens. Unsurprisingly enough, I was against this idea when I first heard about it.
And I kept being against it all through the show. It wasn't all because of the multi-media thing, I don't think. There was a large (at least 20 feet high) metal framework on which everything took place, which made the production feel pinched - it would have been a very clever use of space if the house had been trying to make do with a narrow stage. But since the Met has space and to spare, there's no reason to do something like that, especially for this opera.
The chorus wasn't the dancing girls in the first part, which was fine - except that the singers stood in a black-clad mass at the bottom of the stage, with light on them. Reasons I dislike this will be discussed later.
Then there were soldiers. They marched backward, which had me asking "why." Now, there's three kinds of "why" a production can make you ask: 1. Hmm, that's an interesting directorial choice. I wonder why they did it! This clearly has some basis in the text or comes out of an interpretation of it. (e.g. a production of Hamlet I was told about in which Fortinbras shoots Horatio at the end);
2. Oh god why would you do that ever? (e.g. the Benvenuto Cellini I saw in Russia in which the first finale took place at a magic show and Cellini and Fieramosca were dressed in bunny suits; any of the Regie-quizzes on parterre); and
3. Yeah, okay, but why? (e.g. the marching backwards and most of the things going on with the screen) and I get the feeling that the answer to the last one is "because we could," which I don't feel is a valid reason for a directorial choice.
(Also the Met titles translated all the weird sexual tension between Mephistophélès and Faust out of "Voici des roses")
When Faust and Marguerite kiss, there were pairs of dancers in all the squares of the structure, multiplying their action. It was visually interesting to some extent, but it also had me asking the third kind of "why," which I feel is exactly what a production should try to avoid.
During "D'amour l'ardente flamme" Marguerite's face appears on the video screen; the background is chains, and her face appears to be on fire. As some nice ladies on the way out said, "We already know she's in purgatory"; there's no need to show it to us in living color. And at the end of the aria she is semi-crucified on a cross of red light. My problem with this is one of interpretation: Marguerite's not a Christ-figure at all. If anyone in the opera is, it's Faust himself (Marguerite gains grace through his sacrifice.)
More generally, I felt that the biggest problem was that the production drew attention to its own artificiality. Of course, we all know that we are going to see fiction; but a good production should create its own world - and to me that means not drawing the audience out of it with details that say "This is a production; it is not real", details like completely separating the singers of the chorus and the townsmen. Which is not to say that a production can't be stylized, of course. But this seemed like the sets themselves wanted to be looked at; it made the technology more important that the Berlioz.
Of course, La damnation is a hard opera to stage; there's a lot of quick scene changes and special effects - like Faust and Mephistophélès riding across though the air on black horses - but it was staged before technology somehow.
And I'm not even touching That Scene with All the Jesuses.
And I kept being against it all through the show. It wasn't all because of the multi-media thing, I don't think. There was a large (at least 20 feet high) metal framework on which everything took place, which made the production feel pinched - it would have been a very clever use of space if the house had been trying to make do with a narrow stage. But since the Met has space and to spare, there's no reason to do something like that, especially for this opera.
The chorus wasn't the dancing girls in the first part, which was fine - except that the singers stood in a black-clad mass at the bottom of the stage, with light on them. Reasons I dislike this will be discussed later.
Then there were soldiers. They marched backward, which had me asking "why." Now, there's three kinds of "why" a production can make you ask: 1. Hmm, that's an interesting directorial choice. I wonder why they did it! This clearly has some basis in the text or comes out of an interpretation of it. (e.g. a production of Hamlet I was told about in which Fortinbras shoots Horatio at the end);
2. Oh god why would you do that ever? (e.g. the Benvenuto Cellini I saw in Russia in which the first finale took place at a magic show and Cellini and Fieramosca were dressed in bunny suits; any of the Regie-quizzes on parterre); and
3. Yeah, okay, but why? (e.g. the marching backwards and most of the things going on with the screen) and I get the feeling that the answer to the last one is "because we could," which I don't feel is a valid reason for a directorial choice.
(Also the Met titles translated all the weird sexual tension between Mephistophélès and Faust out of "Voici des roses")
When Faust and Marguerite kiss, there were pairs of dancers in all the squares of the structure, multiplying their action. It was visually interesting to some extent, but it also had me asking the third kind of "why," which I feel is exactly what a production should try to avoid.
During "D'amour l'ardente flamme" Marguerite's face appears on the video screen; the background is chains, and her face appears to be on fire. As some nice ladies on the way out said, "We already know she's in purgatory"; there's no need to show it to us in living color. And at the end of the aria she is semi-crucified on a cross of red light. My problem with this is one of interpretation: Marguerite's not a Christ-figure at all. If anyone in the opera is, it's Faust himself (Marguerite gains grace through his sacrifice.)
More generally, I felt that the biggest problem was that the production drew attention to its own artificiality. Of course, we all know that we are going to see fiction; but a good production should create its own world - and to me that means not drawing the audience out of it with details that say "This is a production; it is not real", details like completely separating the singers of the chorus and the townsmen. Which is not to say that a production can't be stylized, of course. But this seemed like the sets themselves wanted to be looked at; it made the technology more important that the Berlioz.
Of course, La damnation is a hard opera to stage; there's a lot of quick scene changes and special effects - like Faust and Mephistophélès riding across though the air on black horses - but it was staged before technology somehow.
And I'm not even touching That Scene with All the Jesuses.
