In an age where the Met Opera’s ticket sales cover less than half its operating budget; an age where it survives--and sometimes just barely--on donations from patrons that are aging on and out; it’s difficult, to speak euphemistically, to say that opera is relevant or interesting to the mainstream. Even within highly educated social strata possessing the social and economic capital to attend the opera, the interest rarely exists both in the middle aged and young.
So to see the Met fairly full for the run of Berg’s Lulu, one had to ask--why? The opera is no Boheme: no mawkish love story with soaring melodies; no Mozartean parable espousing Aristotelian values and certainly not in English (so rarely does the Met deign to do something native and when it translates to English it’s often some “family” appropriate operetta that those who can comprehend English wish it had been left in translation.
Which is to say, the attraction--for most--was not Berg’s notoriously eccentric, atonal, 12-tone music; nor was it the lead soprano--supposedly making her last run as the ill-fated vamp for which she is internationally heralded and lauded; rather, the younger, more visually inclined crowd (as in visual arts) was there to see famed visual artist, William Kentridge, direct the dark tale.
As with his memorable interpretation of Shostakovich's The Nose, Kentridge unabashedly left his signature marks all over the piece with his quirky use of over-sized body parts that functioned almost like anthropomorphized body parts; his integration of short films and sculptures for which he has always been known.
The large hands, worn by Lulu at various points aside, the production provided something truly rare and this author dares say transcendent at the opera: it offered an experience. With Gelb’s mandate to make opera more theatrical, many a theater/film director have been brought in to breathe new life into the form. Many have added insights and created beautiful tableaus; as well as ample scandals (Luc Bondy’s Tosca) and even rifled anger (LePage’s Ring cycle). Regardless, each time such an opera “outsider” stamps his mark on a piece of the lyric repertory, the perennial debate emerges over respect for the piece in the context of interpretation.
Given opera’s style and form are foreign enough to most lay audiences and that classical signing itself (not to mention atonal modern German opera) is an acquired taste, there is increasing importance on creating visual and dramatic allure to ease the audience into the story. It is not that the visuals or acting or any other artistic value should trump the singing or musical values; however, they should most certainly equal them, support them and elicit them.
Personally, I thought Marlis Petersen (whom I normally find adequate, but boring, in standard roles; competent in technique but lacking exceptional beauty or quality in her instrument) shone as Lulu. Shone incandescently. She sang the notoriously difficult score as though it were Mozart; which is to say, she sang Lulu beautifully and lyrically so that one did not hear a 12-tone disjointed scale but thoughts, feelings and ideas as expressed by a very developed character: one imbued with complexity as much as humanity. Aside from a few strains in some of the passages requiring higher tessitura, the soprano sang the long, exhausting role better than any of the men who shared the stage with her that night all of whom had far less singing. Interestingly, though, the audience only seemed to meet her halfway: politely applauding but not nearly as much as, this critic, thinks they should have considering the vocal olympics--not to mention theatrical hurdles--Petersen assailed with relative aplomb. I wonder if she was too convincing in the femme fatale role that there was a disconnect emotionally between her and some audiences members who can’t suspend disbelief.
But this is not a vocal play by play nor is it even a critical analysis of the opera. It’s merely to say that Kentridge’s Lulu--for some alchemical reason this here musing aims to distill--was a success unlike most Met productions. It somehow honored the form, presented it fully but breathed life into it anew with the director’s idiosyncratic visuals, stagings, interpolations and thusly composite depiction of Lulu’s world.
As I watched the singers give some of the more compelling--acting wise--performances I’ve seen at the Met in recent memory; I wondered if they had been more coached by musical repetiteurs, with regard to interpretation, rather than Kentridge whom I assumed was preoccupied with sets, costumes and the visual accoutrements. I was delighted to find, however, a rehearsal video of Kentridge providing very detailed guidance to Petersen and her colleagues (down to where and how to place her hand on the baritone…).
While he has ventured into performance art, Kentridge is no student of method acting or Stanislavski; which begs another question: is direction theatrical or visual? Can compelling storytelling--in the theater--derive from visual acuity as much as emotional honesty? In a certain sense, it’s almost a different variant on the persistent question in acting pedagogy: does acting start on the inside or the outside? Is it our physical/external forces that shape our emotions or does our inner life color and designate our physical use and carriage?
No rehearsal footage--large or small--or mere observation of two successful opera productions by an acclaimed visual artist will provide conclusivity. Nevertheless, it broaches a very interesting issue in the arts. The arts which so struggle and yet always seem to benefit from cross-pollination. Not that every criss-cross or interdisciplinary endeavor is productive or artistically earnest or even compelling; but if through art we lose the self to find the self, we cultivate the personal self through discipline and rigor in a particular form so to unleash our universal self thusly connecting to and conveying something universal (of ourselves) in the process (which the audience palabay experiences if not overly recognizes). So maybe visual artists should be directing operas more often just as conductors should be directing the occasional play (when it is fitting).
When it is fitting is another pandora’s box entirely. But perhaps 2015’s short lived revival of the play Living on Love, starring none other than real-life operatic diva Renee Fleming, would have survived past previews if a more musical hand had directed the straight comedy. No guarantee, but it is to affirm that, increasingly, definitions and divisions between the arts seem to limit and stifle creativity, ingenuity and genuine expression whereas the potential for communication is amplified by juxtaposition of the seemingly different, heightened by influences from “abroad” and ultimately magnified and multiplied in efficacy when taken out of its niche and more interpreted by an “outsider” who can translate it for the pedestrian world more readily.
The marketing benefits of cross-pollination are axiomatic: they sell more tickets to segments who might not otherwise participate in a particular art form but are, in some way, artistically inclined and thereby likely have the intellectual, social and financial capital to potentially transfer said resources (of time, spirit and money) into new fields of artistic exploration if lured by a familiar figure from the realm they must know. This is why so many prominent curators and visual arts aficionados were present at the Met for the Lulu run. But beyond the financial and commercial boosts from cross-pollination, it is the collaboration between developed artistic spirits that proves most valuable. The collaboration of genuine creators and ideators who wish to take nothing and say something old and yet paradoxically new. It’s oft been said that we’re all artists if we pour ourselves into that which we do--bankers, doctors, painters and dancers alike. Such a world view of cultivation of the self so to more easily, readily collaborate with others in disparate fields could be and is such a radical worldview that could catalyze such serious change in the world across fields. But to start, it must be the artists (in the traditional sense) who bind together to say that boxes are useful to cultivate and develop the self but not to live by.
All in all, in an age where the Met survives by charity more than patronage or demand; opera should pay more attention to these successful cross-pollinations and ask itself how it--and so many other arts--can collaborate rather than isolate themselves and thereby atrophy.