Conductor Carl St. Clair recently chose to leave the Komische Oper in Berlin, where he has served as music director for three years, at the end of this season (he was under contract for two more seasons). A press release cited “artistic differences”. Now St.Clair gave an interview to the Orange County Register's Tim Mangan and explained how much Regietheater irks him -- consider for example a production of "Fidelio":
“The concept is that instead of a curtain going up, the curtain came down, I mean literally down,” St.Clair said. “Seats were being removed, all the props were being thrown into a huge dumpster on the stage, because (the concept) was talking about the fact that theater doesn’t exist anymore as we know it to exists.
“And for instance, in the third act Florestan sings his opening aria completely in the dark, in the middle of trash bags, unseen, and from a dumpster. He’s in the dumpster, the doors have been opened, trash bags are falling out, and the trash is really what is the remnants of the theater – you know, puppets and costumes and bags of trash. I mean this is just one example