Et cela dix fois dans un jour

[sovay]

Patrice Chéreau has died. His opera stagings were legendary. I knew him because he was a marvelous Camille Desmoulins in Andrzej Wajda's Danton (1983)—better-looking than the paintings, but just as snarky, mercurial, scared, and passionate as the contemporary accounts and decades of fandom since—and for that one role I miss him. I should see some of his movies. I hope his operas are on film.

Comments

[sovay]

it also basically says "fuck Berg's incredibly precise stage directions which are written into the score with arrows indicating where in the measure actions should take place" which makes some people apoplectic (I'm almost one of them).

Why "almost," then?

The Ring is quite famous; Rheingold and Valkyrie are the best bits, as both the staging and especially the singing go far downhill from there.

Check.

Thank you for weighing in!

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Almost because I think you can probably do interesting things in a production that ignores the stage directions, but on the other hand, this is one where I'm actually happy to talk about authorial intention because hi, his concept of dramaturgy is made manifest in the score by how insanely precise these indications are. (I'm lazy, or I'd go take a picture if I can find where I put the damn thing.) I think Boulez just could not square (he's the conductor, and he defended Chereau's deviations) his love of Berg's music with Berg's adherence to a hyper-Wagnerian style that Boulez considered amateur at best.

very ugly link to Boulez' comments via google books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=NGY4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=chereau+boulez+lulu+stage+directions&source=bl&ots=an_eeuCGPq&sig=X0cDolF6nxVkLmyWVtlIw_6P9YI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uMRYUvvPNIX28gTHtIGQCw&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=chereau%20boulez%20lulu%20stage%20directions&f=false