The Directors Strike Back, Call Maazel & Zeffirelli "Provincial", "Ungenerous", "Old", "Pitiful"

After Lorin Maazel and then Franco Zeffirelli slammed, in Corriere della Sera, a long list of the directors they don't like (and the Salzburg Festival guilty of hiring them), the directors today strike back in the same paper (online today for subsribers only; for free starting tomorrow, in the paper's digital archives).

Today, an entire page is devoted to their response.

Graham Vick says:

"I am deeply saddened by this pathetic inability to accept that art is inextricably linked to change. Unfortunately one of Italy's problems is that power -- in politics, music and otherwise -- is always firmly in the hands of old people. Who ignore everything that has been accomplished by younger talents. I find this gross lack of generosity and humanity simply pitiful: these artists have received everything from music but I want to reassure them: we'll go ahead, following our path, knowing very well that after us new people will come with ideas thatwill innovate even more".

Giorgio Battistelli, composer and former artistic director of Verona's Arena:

"I'm appalled. Their ideas aren't even conservative, they're reactionary and provincial".

Jurgen Flimm, Intendant of Salzburg's Festival is laconic:

"Maestro Maazel says he's escaping from Salzburg? He hasn't been invited to conduct here since 2001".

Director Denis Krief:

"Apparently Zeffirelli and Maazel are confused: the fact that they don't like certain things doesn't change the fact that the resume of the directors they don't like is unimpeachable. It's not wise to innovate at all cost, for the sake of innovation: but the theater, to survive, needs to be open to new ideas and experimentation and freedom, it can't become a cult".

Opera Chic's suggestion for a peaceful resolution of the conflict: what about a nice game of Army of 2?

Comments

[Kevin Edmund Youkilis 4 MVP]

"gross lack of generosity and humanity"

Them's fighting words! In Maazel's and Zeffirelli's time they had to settle stuff like this with duels...

[Henry Holland]

"Maestro Maazel says he's escaping from Salzburg? He hasn't been invited to conduct here since 2001".

Ouch, that's going to leave a dent! :-)

[A Real Cad]

No one likes cranky old men, look at McCain.

[MicheleAngelini]

Wow, pretty intense! And all within a day!
I guess I'm surprised (or maybe not) that Frengo named and shamed so many people. I really liked your perspective on the issue, OC (but I admit, I love Zeff's Traviata and Carmen at the Met, for me all others pale in comparison!) Thanks for the extensive coversage!! Abbracci!

[Chris]

Sounds to me like the chic-police are out in force. If you don't go with the wave you're a cranky old fossil and so on and so forth. Of course nothing is quite as provincial as extreme radicalism. I think of food fadism, dishes prepared with such bizarre ingredients and in such bizarre forms that they cannot be judged since they resemble nothing ever seen or tasted before. Good way to escape invidious comparisons and detection of inferiority.

[Palcofunesto]

I thought this might happen, eventually. All the supposed younger visions of opera, Vick is hardly young, are just that. Young. They are further from when these pieces were written. Less respect and more need to invent.

Sorry, nudity is overdone and getting more and more naked in it's pathetic attempts to be the unique talk, the gossip of a show, the reason to see it, to supply controversy and new idea. It's lost it;s punch. Turning opera into benign pornography is easy and a sell out. Talking down to a public and trying to appeal to the baser instincts of an over exposed public to sex in the world while exposing them, pardon the pun, to music that will transfigure and enlighten them is a great paradox.

The great masters who wrote these pieces wrote them. They wrote them. To rewrite them? You beter compose your own and leave the giants to their masterpieces. After all will any of these new director's visions be here in one hundred years? Will anyone care? Yes we need to change with the times, but best not to throw the baby away with the bath water.

I applaud Mr. Zefferelli and Mr/ Maazel. The new is already shown itself tired and overdone and used up and devoid of perspective and respect and is deserving of none.

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

Of course, the deconstructionist directors never take on the work of a living composer! They should try their legal luck by sexually abusing the "masterpieces" of their contemporaries.

[Roberto]

Deconstruction - destruction with a con in its heart; that just about describes many evening I've endured over the last few years, and perpetrated by singers who can't be heard and, if they can, they're out of tune. The music seems so unimportant nowadays, but surely that is the reason these lyric masterpieces are staged (many by directors who actually don't like music!)

[Henry Holland]

Of course, the deconstructionist directors never take on the work of a living composer!

So, I'm just imagining all those Peter Sellars productions of Kaija Saariaho and John Adams pieces that I've seen then, for just one example? Nice bit of slander there: "Oooohhh, they only do it to composers who won't talk back!". I mean, because all living composers want to go back to the days of park-and-bark and painted flats and bad wigs, oh yes they do.