Maazel's Wrath: Salzburg "Boring", "Trashy", "Enough With Those Weirdly Provocative, Arrogant Directors". "Audiences Not Offended, They're Simply Bored"

In today's Corriere della Sera Lorin Maazel goes nuclear, in a huge interview (not online), on the Salzburg Festival and, in general, on "provocative" directors.

Let's read a few choice bits from what the august Milanese paper calls "Maazel's Wrath".

The Maestro is currently conducting a Beethoven cycle in beautiful Taormina and he calls that Sicilian festival "a serene oasis" where many young people attend the concerts:

"I spent a lifetime in Salzburg, my debut there was in 1963 and I conducted there 109 times in all, between operas and concerts. Now I've had enough: enough with weirdly provocative stagings of arrogant directors who think innovation means boring the audience using public funds".

"I feel like speaking up for the people who buy tickets and go to the opera and are subjected to the wrongheaded reinterpretations of great operas; that's what I told Gerard Mortier when he ran the festival"

"Often those directors are simply uneducated. Like that guy, I don't even remember his name, who was directing A Midsummer Night's Dream in Salzburg while bragging that he despised Shakespeare. They only care about scandals. But the audience do not get offended, they're simply bored. At that premiere, this big wealthy Swiss man stood up and told his wife, 'Elisabetta this is so boring! Let's go have some dinner instaed'"

"I get things done the way I want them because I have a name, and a history. Other conductors simply adapt themselves. Until one day I blew up, disgusted, nothing in Salzburg was about the music anymore, but we should always respect the great composers"

Maazel also slams La Fenice and Hamburg, "where the great texts get defaced".

And attacks Robert Carsen:

"During Traviata's preludio, he wanted to see a bunch of men approach Violetta's bed throwing a lot of money around. 'Traviata is sex and money', he told me. He reduced Verdi to trash. I had to work a lot to reach a compromise. The men left quickly and Violetta threw the money away, spitefully. I wanted to save her sensibility, La Dame Aux Camelias has a pure heart. All the opposite of the picture of depravity they wanted to force upon the opera. It was as depraved as that Otello directed by Peter Zadek in Hamburg where a naked Ophelia was hung out to dry on a rope like laundry, her ass in the air. I have nothing against nudity. At the Lido or the Moulin Rouge beautiful girls look great with their t*ts hanging out. But the only thing a lady with her vocal folds in order needs to expose is her voice. People go to the opera for that".

Zing!

Comments

[Adelaide]

Bravo, maestro.

[Victor]

"the only thing a lady with her vocal folds in order needs to expose is her voice"

Not bad.

[Carlos]

Bravo Maestro! You are absolutely right! Grazie!!!

[coccodrilo]

who p*ssed in his cornflakes?

[Maria]

I fully agree with Mr.Maazel. I wish more conductors were like him instead of bending their heads compromising with the so called "modern" staging.
Operas are not pornography!

[sb]

It seems someone has to disagree - so I guess that is my job now. It is true that this year's Salzburg Festival lacked excitement and quality, but it is not right so say this for the years before. Actually I am really bored by stage directions a la Ronconi or Audi today - and I guess these are the names Maazel wished to direct operas. Maazel seems to be an aged personality that is wishing back days he remembers as being better. Maybe I will do the same in 40 years....

[Kevin Edmund Youkilis 4 MVP]

He's comparing apples to oranges; we all know that there are plenty of frauds directing operas nowadays (hello, Germany!) and the Dramaturg is usually the biggest fraud of them all. But dragging Carsen into this? Are we supposed to miss those old tired Zeffirelli productions?

Some productions just don't work and it's only fair to call them as you see them; but Lorin sounds just like a cranky old man who doesn't like a director to upstage him because it has to be all about him. Carsen is not a hack, he misses the point sometimes, but he tries to do good work and often does. I'm afraid Maazel would not object to the most awful dusty old static production just because it's traditional and doesn't intrude with his megalomania.

[La Cieca]

It was as depraved as that Otello directed by Peter Zadek in Hamburg where a naked Ophelia was hung out to dry on a rope like laundry

What was Ophelia doing in a production of Otello in the first place?

[MicheleAngelini]

It's a shame that Il corriere is not publishing this article online, I would be interested to read it in it's entirety.

[Opera Chic]

La Cieca: Whatevs! Same author, they both die, don't interrupt the maestro while he's on a roll! You'll interfere with his mojo!

[Connie]

Since they gave him that Calixto Bieito DVD set for Hanukkah it's all been downhill...

[La Cieca]

Chic: La Cieca will also point out that the Zadek Othello (it was the play, not the opera) was done in 1976, i.e., over 30 years ago. That's a long time to hold a grudge.

[furst]

He does seem a bit cranky. A glass or 3 of good Bourbon would help - he might consider rocking the Pappy Van Winkle 12 year old.

As someone who has seen bunch of truly horrid productions in Salzburg, (including 2 this year) and all things being equal has something of preferance for traditional productions, me thinks the Maestro is using something of an ax where a rapier or at least a saber would be more appropriate (even if such should in many instances be used with considerable force and effect).

Generally concur with KEY's perspective.

As for the Mastro's comments respecting ... err...um lack of discretion in certain productions.... While one feels compelled to concur that the "device" can be used in gratuitous and harmful fashion one would be hard pressed to accept the proposition as a general rule.

[A Real Cad]

I disagree. Opera needs more a$$.

[Victor]

Less is not more anymore

[Gyges]

Maazel's outburst sounds like sour grapes to me. Unfortunately he has become a stodgy and rather boring conductor. The NY Philharmonic is counting the days till he leaves -the subscribers flocked to change dates on which he was conducting! His comments on opera production are too broad and old fogeyish to carry any authority, even if he had any left in the field. He reminds me of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, who, on being banished from Rome retorts: "I banish you!"

[A.C. Douglas]

La Cieca wrote: "What was Ophelia doing in a production of Otello in the first place?"
--------------------------

Given the manifold grotesqueries of the Konzepts of Regietheater, I wonder what La Cieca finds so amiss in Ophelia -- or Moby Dick, for that matter -- making an appearance in Otello. A perfectly permissible and reasonable business as these things go.

ACD

[Walter Ramsey]

Maazel isn't a cranky old man, he's trying to put his finger on a whole philosophy of opera direction that is more than any one person. I don't think he does a particularly good job, but it is always good to see prominent people criticize this philosophy.

I don't think he does a good job, because he says how horrible the productions are, how they are contrived just to create scandal, and then goes on to describe the events in the show. He is playing right into the hands of the directors who create this nonsense, by describing their productions in words. He is validating their approach, actually, by being so clear about it.

The true issue here is that the opera directors who put on this "Regietheater" are the victims. They're the victims of an economy which demands a scandal, they're the victims of a backwards postmodernism and cynicism that says no means of expression are direct, and always must carry some political subtext, they're the victims of a culture that has lost its dignity. We should in a way, feel sorry for these people, who don't have the artistic strength, or creativity, to rise above the artistic challenges of their own time, but rather cave in time and time again, always trying to outdo themselves in salaciousness.

These unfortunate souls lack a true education, a true exposure to the arts, and a true respect not only of those who strived so hard to create these works, but of themselves.

Walter Ramsey

[Parsifal]

There is a lot of truth in what he says and I totally agree in some but I don;t expect young(er) people to be of his opinion...BTW, You cannot use Carsen in order to attack stage directors. At least he loves opera (supposing or knowing that Bieito for example detests it) and even if he had some not really good ideas, he had some brilliant ones too...(Was the Midsummer's Night Dream maestro Maazel is referring to, Carsen's production? Cos that was wonderful!).

[Morris Smith]

So, Maazel is annoyed by _other people's_ cynicism? That's rich!

[Les Mitchell]

If all of these productions in Salzburg are like some of those pictured on the pages of OC, then I can take comfort in the fact that I've missed nothing by not visiting Salzburg in many years. I've been disgusted with these ugly productions for years and years, and I think it's about time this garbage comes to an end. I also think that star-singers should think twice before appearing in such horrendous surroundings. Artists like Netrebko, Florez, Villazon, Fleming, Gheorghiu, Alagna, etc have sufficient clout to refuse to appear in such productions. Can you imagine Callas, Tebaldi, Caballe, Sutherland, Domingo, or Nilsson consenting to appear in such garbage????? I think NOT!!!

[pallastrozzi]

What the maestro is referring to is rampant in the visual arts, and anyone with a clear criticism of the shallowness, bad faith and attempts at scandal are labeled reactionaries, as some are doing here to Maazel. He knows of what he speaks: Bad directors can demolish the most sublimely sung perfomances. Is that what we want?

[Renee]

Why are these "edgy" productions so boring and annoying? Because they are crude and patronizing, they don't leave much to the audience's imagination and insult their intelligence. Operas are first of all about music but, often being based on works of literaure, they also do carry a social message. That message is as timeless as the music itself, and operagoers are usually smart enough find their own individual interpretation - without being hit over the head with an "updated", "socially relevant" concept of a "modern" director.

Bravo, Maestro Maazel. You rock.

[Adi Schnytzer]

I am disgusted by what I read. Maazel has the chutzpah to say that these directors distort the spirit of the original? I fully agree (and even love Audi, especially his Amsterdam Ring), but hate his hypocrisy. This is the crazy who CUT La Traviata at La Scala!!! HE knows better than VERDI??? Yes, b^tch about directors and Eurotrash, yes complain about beewbs if you want to be a prude but don't you dare cut the music of composers whose music you are not worthy to conduct. I am staggered that anyone in Italy would even bother interviewing the turkey.

[Walter Ramsey]

"Operas are first of all about music but, often being based on works of literaure, they also do carry a social message"

This is the problem I am talking about. We live in a time, where nothing can be seen as direct expression, or clear thought, without having some kind of political subtext, or "social message." It is this kind of anti-artistic thinking that is leading directors to try and out-do themselves in salaciousness on the opera stage.

Nabokov was a tireless fighter against the idea that literature in particular should have a "message," and he wrote that literature is rather a succession of images that hopefully impress themselves on the reader. These days, the music itself is not good enough; the plot, the story-telling of the libretto is not good enough; the drama is not good enough; it must mean something else. It must be an inherent critique on the invisible social machinations that pervert our society, or it must be a paean to the disgusting and unworthy in human nature, or it must be this, it must be that.

What the world desperately needs is a movement that restores credibility to the arts, and restores the natural dignity to the direct expression of opera composers, without having to force a "message" down their throats.

Walter Ramsey

[Maria]

What Mr Ramsey writes is contradictory; There is no neutrality or absence of ethics in society. Otherwise there would be no humanity at all. There is no life without a message and there is no man without leaving a trace behind him. Perhaps he should study the words of Socrates who always reached to a conclusion of what promotes the good among people.So yes, there is always a message to reach or else you are completely lost in sentences that end only in question marks.

[furst]

Look at all the hubub you started OC. I trust your pleased with yourself.

Just to clarify, many and indeed most productions one finds in European houses are not only, boring and muscally and dramtically inapposite and far to often degragde the quality of the dramatic singing and suck the life our of the opera (e.g. Guth Figaro at Salzburg). Still, at one hardly longs for the stand-and-deliver methodology of old. One only has to look at the youtube of Janowitz singing Dove Sono in Paris in 1980 (fwiw I've seen that production and can attest that it can be remarkably dynamic and appealing in the right hands.

Bottom line is the Maestro could still use the bourbon (or if Cognac is more appealing to his cosmopolitan sensibilities perhaps some Kelt Admiral - I also seem to have learned from the etherthat his friend the Dear Leader is a partial to such).

[coccodrillo]

> Maazel isn't a cranky old man

He's a millionaire, in excellent health for his age, used to be a child prodigy and that means he's been a celebrity all his life, he's rubbed elbows with so many other celebrities he forgot most of them, he speaks 10 languages, he conducted Gershwin in North Korea, he owns half the State of Virginia, he's enjoying the summer in Sicily.

And he's still in a foul mood. What should we mere mortals stuck at the office over the summer for a meager pay do then? I rest my case.

[countertenner]

Virginia is a Commonwealth. Good point tho. If Maazel's got a right to be cranky then I am the Incredible Hulk!

[infant 18]

BRAVO MAESTRO!!!! I just wish he were about 30 yrs younger...

[syro0]

In fact, the article is available online at the Corriere della Sera.
Thanks for pointing it out, though. It's quite a fun read.

Link: http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2008/agosto/20/ira_Maazel_co_9_080820010.shtml

(sorry for the awkward form)

[Miguel]

What
Would
Opera
Chic
Do?

[Opera Chic]

The real question is, What Would Frengo Do?

[Walter Ramsey]

"What Mr Ramsey writes is contradictory; There is no neutrality or absence of ethics in society. Otherwise there would be no humanity at all. There is no life without a message and there is no man without leaving a trace behind him. Perhaps he should study the words of Socrates who always reached to a conclusion of what promotes the good among people.So yes, there is always a message to reach or else you are completely lost in sentences that end only in question marks."

I never said anything about ethics. Do I understand you right, if I say, you think literature in particular always carries a moral message? That literature always strives to be a moral guide? That literature exists to help other people and do good in their lives?

I only object to the insistence in Regietheater that nothing is what it appears to be on the surface; that what is written down is not good enough, and that it has to have a social and political subtext. What is the "message" of the Ring? What is the "message" of Traviata? I don't believe that Wagner and Verdi wrote their works, to try desperately to tell us something political or social or even ethical. They weren't trying to write a Bible. But today you can't go to the opera without having to endure some ridiculous "message," a "point," when in fact the point of the whole thing is the music plus the story.

Every stupid choice that Maazel describes has been chosen as a way to make a political or social "point," or even because the director believed that he was expressing the subtextual "message" of his respective opera. To say that the foils themselves, the rotting rabbit corpses and the severed Christ heads and whatnot, should shock people into demanding a return to traditional staged opera, is to miss the point, in my opinion. In fact it is to play into the hands of those people who want to elicit cheap thrills from the audience - in this interview with Maazel, they are proving themselves successful. The focus should in fact be shifted away from their psycho-social-political mumbo-jumbo, and on to the root of the cause.

That's why I say these directors are victims, even more than the audiences. they're victims of a screwed up society that demands subtexts, and doesn't trust face-value expression. They're victims of a culture whose members cannot trust each other, or even their ancestors. Instead of obsessing over the cheap thrills they create on stage, we should be asking, what is the root of this mess? How did we get into this mess?

Walter Ramsey

[Walter Ramsey]

"He's a millionaire, in excellent health for his age, used to be a child prodigy and that means he's been a celebrity all his life, he's rubbed elbows with so many other celebrities he forgot most of them, he speaks 10 languages, he conducted Gershwin in North Korea, he owns half the State of Virginia, he's enjoying the summer in Sicily.

And he's still in a foul mood. What should we mere mortals stuck at the office over the summer for a meager pay do then? I rest my case. "

And you're restoring to cheap ad hominem. If his being able to study 10 languages (you seem to imply he was unfairly born with that ability) somehow detracts from his overall point about the state of opera, I would love to hear how.

Walter Ramsey

[Opera Chic]

syro0, it eventually became available online for free today because the story came out yesterday -- in yesterday's paper. to read the day's Corriere online you need to pay a fee (1 euro) here

http://edicola.corriere.it/dyneol/dyn/index.jhtml?_requestid=78484#

or you simply have to wait until the next day and get it for free from their archives just like you did

[Not La Cieca]

Thank you, Maestro!!! Don't these directors know that 95% of the audience is thinking towards the directors, "Hey Skippy, who told you that you are smarter than Mozart?"

Srsly, Mozart, Verdi, et al. endure because they are written from the human spirit and speak to the human spirit. That's why plenty of this music works well when staged in concert form, sung by men in near-identical outfits and women in semi-unfashionable ballgowns. The singers present us the music but DON'T TELL US WHAT TO THINK ABOUT IT. The music is perfectly capable of speaking for itself. That's why it's called, you know, GREAT MUSIC.

Furthermore, when we in the audience meet these works, we meet them at different stages in our lives. Our hearts change (grow larger and warmer, one would hope) and so we hear "new" things in familiar works. And this without the help of some whacked-out costuming scheme.

[Maria]

Well,well... 35 comments until now, OC !
What has been the highest score in your history?
Finally Lorin Maazel must read all these
opinions and give you an exclusive interview.
..................

There is no mess Mr. Ramsey. Everybody including you are the result of personal choices. So there are no victims because everyone is guilty of excessive curiosity of
what more life is going to give to him. The aim is always one and common: to please our
senses. Capito?

[Renee]

I like what Not La Cieca and Maria say, but all this is getting way too complicated. Are we all victims? Or not? What we need right now is a plate of pasta and another glass of vino. And if we don't like the blood and guts and nipple display on stage, we can just close our eyes and still enjoy the music. As long as it's great music.

[A.C. Douglas]

Walter Ramsey wrote: "What is the 'message' of the Ring? What is the 'message' of Traviata? I don't believe that Wagner and Verdi wrote their works, to try desperately to tell us something political or social or even ethical."
---------------------------------------------------

Not to be pedantic about this, but in writing the _Ring_, Wagner at first very much "wrote ... to try desperately to tell us something political [and] social [and] ethical." Thanks, however, to his always infallible creative unconscious, and provoked by his study of the writings of Schopenhauer which writings echoed almost perfectly his deepest feelings on the matter, he gave up that simpleminded idea, and as a consequence we have today a _Ring_ that's infinitely richer and many-layered in meaning -- that is, until the Regietheater vandals get their hands on it, and reduce it to the trivial, myopic, single-layered socio-political pap that characterizes their productions.

ACD

[Walter Ramsey]

Thank you ACD. I used the Ring as an example, exactly because of the progression in Wagner's thinking over the course of the 25 years he worked on that project. It shows that it is too simple to imagine any work has one message, or one point.

Walter Ramsey

[A.C. Douglas]

Oops (missing words).

My,

"...his [Wagner's] study of the writings of Schopenhauer which writings echoed almost perfectly his deepest feelings on the matter...."

should have read:

"...his [Wagner's] study of the writings of Schopenhauer which writings echoed almost perfectly his deepest feelings on the matter of music and art...."

ACD

[Walter Ramsey]

"There is no mess Mr. Ramsey. Everybody including you are the result of personal choices. So there are no victims because everyone is guilty of excessive curiosity of
what more life is going to give to him. The aim is always one and common: to please our
senses. Capito? "

Sometimes our choices are limited by circumstance, and I argue that the so-called Regietheater directors should in a way have our sympathy, not for their work, but because of their inability to rise above circumstances.

Let's imagine a singer in one of these shows, a singer who finished conservatory training, and is on the cusp of a career, but everything is precarious. Let's say one season, she only gets one offer, the role of Cherubino in a post-modern, S&M production of Figaro. She could play the part topless in leather chaps, in order to make the director's point about the brutality of gender divisions in our society by exhibiting a little boy with breasts, hoping that her singing will be noticed, or she could sit it out and not advance her career at all. In my opinion, this poor girl is a victim of her circumstances, no matter what choice she makes.

A director, similarly, is under economic pressure, artistic pressure from peers, and pressure to have a show get enough publicity, that people will attend. Since opera in the traditional form is generally less attention-grabbing then movies, that director is challenged to make a production that will grab the people. When directors turn to cheap thrills to do that, you know they have failed. They are the victims of their circumstances: on one hand, if they had gone the traditional route, they would have been castrated by their peers; ignored by the press; and probably the company would have suffered economically. The choice to make a production full of salaciousness is what seems open to them. It's what their peers are doing, it is what gets printed in the papers, it brings people, possibly even an audience not traditionally associated with the opera, into the theatre.

I just think that these productions full of cheap thrills are artistic cop-outs. They are the result of all those pressures on opera companies to fill the seats, and they have the seeming authority of being accepted by the crowd (by which I mean peer directors and companies). I think in this sense, the directors are victims of circumstance; their choices reflect poor artistic training or even a total lack of it, and we should feel sorry for them that they are placed in positions where they aren't up to the task to achieve anything for the good.

Walter Ramsey

[Henry Holland]

My biggest problem with the people that are being trashed here is that, in some cases, they simply do the same thing over and over. Robert Wilson's productions are the same, it doesn't matter if he puts a big picture of a swan on stage in "Lohengrin", the basic production is interchangeable with everything else he's done. I know going in what's going to happen and that's really, really, REALLY boring.

I will say that the most powerful moment I've ever had in an opera house was during a Peter Sellars "Pelleas" here in Los Angeles, with OC's mang E-PS conducting. The production ran during the height of the OJ Simpson trial insanity and was set in a Malibu beach house. Golaud: huge black man Willard White. Melisande: small white, blonde woman Monica Groop.

In Act IV, Golaud meets and beats Melisande after Yniold tells him that he's seen P & M together. So, onstage there's a tall black man terrorizing a small white woman in a town that was in the middle of a trial that had horrible racial over-and-undertones and it was....STUNNING. The crowd was blown away after that scene ended, you could see everyone around you deflating because they'd been so gripped.

So, if Beito wants to have men taking a pewp on stage, BFD, regie like the Sellars can work and to lump everyone together is kind of childish.

[bach_believer]

Walter Ramsey: if the Devil offers you a deal and you trade your soul in, it's not a matter of 'circumstance', but a choice you make.

[Walter Ramsey]

Touché! Then let us pity them for their wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Walter Ramsey

[Ian]

Absolutely, Maazel. Instead, every opera house should be forced to do an endless rotation between one of Frengo's lovingly velvet-stuffed anthems to interior drapery and period furnishings and, of course, the hilarious abortion that was '1984'.

[Pixeltenor]

As much as I love the philosophical nature of this comment section, I am a results oriented person first and foremost.

As any good cultist would do, I try to recruit new people… into the opera fan base. This is in part to still have a career for myself 5 years from now. I see a different reaction from my non-snob non-music educated friends when they see a Regietheater or a "traditional" version of an opera for the first time. The traditional is greeted with more awe at the beauty of the visuals enhanced by the music. Just as important for a first time viewer, the on the surface internet research stands on its own; often with a much changed Regietheater production it is unclear and needs much clarification during intermission. The usual results seem to show that the “shock rock” techniques used in many productions today don’t appeal to new audiences, but give controversy to bring back old ones.

I'm not saying that I'm against Regietheater, but I give priority to a new audience (interested in returning) over a much bored old one.

[Jean-Ronald LaFond]

Maazel Rules! He was my hero before, now I adore him. But one tantrum by the great maestro is not enough to turn around this gradual decay of our great art form. I wish more conductors of influence, the stewards of our great music, would band together and demand that directors they work with read music, and respect it! We are still feeling the unfortunate untimely passing of the great Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.

[Henry Holland]

We are still feeling the unfortunate untimely passing of the great Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

Would that be the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle who set Der Fligende Hollander as Daland's (or was it Erik?) dream, among other things he did that weren't in the librettos of the operas he directed? The same one?