This wee nest of posts really belong in a separate place, as Reiner quite rightly suggests. We already have a thread concerning the creation of opera, but there's a huge wealth of knowledge here about the practical side of performance, which deserves a place on its own. Whether it be an observation, a reminiscence, or a question concerning stagecraft, here's its home.



I'm charmed by the compliment, Ros   Would that I could!  Ron has explained it very well, and Peter Brook is the maestro of such an approach.  Sadly in my own work I rarely ever get the chance to do preparatory and "character" work in this valuable way, since I am a freelancer who doesn't have a permanent troupe and the luxury of time available.  Rather the opposite - the work I get is based on a strange and slightly unenviable reputation I've acquired for being able to turn around a show very quickly (or picking up the pieces when it's all gone wrong, someone has stormed-out etc).  I'm usually "blocking" by the second rehearsal.  In defence of this rather indefensible approach I would say that only performers with a solid training in Stanislavsky and improvisation - and a belief in the worth of such an approach - will ever get anything out of it. A lot of singers who've gone down the "music college" route have never been on a stage in their lives, and their internalised terror leaves them unable to do much in improvisation sessions (except usually to declare the entire thing "a waste of time when we open in three weeks"). Instructions like "come on stage-left rear after the fanfare, march deliberately to the wall, sing your bit whilst inclining your face - but not your body you berk - into the auditorium, and then immediately go downstage and attend upon Caesar" are much more palatable than anything about "motivation" for this kind of performer    Just two months ago I had to put an understudy on into a title role with one week's rehearsal - she'd never appeared on any stage in her entire life, and moreover despised the piece being done. The Director's job in those circumstances is to help the perfomer feel secure and supported and divide long scenes into "here you are being devious", "here you are shocked but not angry yet, save it, smaller gestures etc", "ok, NOW you are angry" etc - and removing "tells", those tell-tale giveaway gestures that undermine the intended result in any scene.

Ron may remember a bass-baritone at ENO in TRISTAN & ISOLDE in a tiddly role, who was prevailed upon by one of my colleagues keen upon "improvisation".  The result was that during Performance 03, when he had previously remained stationary as instructed, he began following Melot round the stage with a huge sword. I honestly thought he might even clobber the bloke?  He was most disgruntled when told to "stay where you were bloody told, mate!" later on.

Impro-based work can be of fabulous quality when there are trained performers and adequate rehearsal time.  Sadly, when promoters expect a show created from scratch in 3 weeks these days,  such work is rarely possible.  Despite disliking doing it,  I would always advocate an initial cast meeting where you explain the way the show will work and show them the set-model, two weeks of blocking, and a week of running whole acts until everyone has it memorised perfectly, the entire show is fireproofed against cockups, and all the scene-changes and "tech moments" have been run until they're as smooth as a ticking clock.  (Banal as it may seem, what's known as "continuity" in tv is a huge part of any show.  I saw a hilarious screw-up in a show last month, in which they'd obviously never rehearsed Act One and run on into Act Two - maybe the Dress Rehearsal broke-down midway?   In TRAVIATA, a coat-stand from Violetta's salon ended-up stranded in the middle of Alfredo Germont's garden - no-one had ever given consideration to how it was taken-off, and Germont Pere strode around the bloody thing   This, sadly, is much more important than "motivation" when the chips are down. God alone knows what Stage Management were up to, but perhaps no-one had ever told them it needed removing? 

"Blocking" = roughing-out a "who is going to stand where" scheme, along with deciding how they get there, where they enter from, and how they exit.  Utterly dull and dreary, but ultimately necessary    Improvisation etc will help get to the heart of the characters and why they think, speak and act as they do...   however, there are still some basic "stagecraft" in theatre which improv can't fix, such as avoiding upstaging (either deliberate or accidental, unless some effect is wanted by doing so),  facing the audience so they can see your face and hear what you say, and being in the right place to be lit by the ingenious lighting-scheme an elder brother or sister helped you with earlier    This is the "basics" - there are many other niceties, such as not putting major speeches/arias too far at the back of the stage, and in larger theatres, having someone check that things set "deep" on the stage are still visible from the back of the Balcony seats.

True "naturalism" in theatre is actually impossible as soon as you seat an audience on only certain sides of the action, put an orchestra in a certain place with a conductor who needs eye-contact, or light the show at all   The ideal is to keep as much naturalism as the (essentially artificial) circumstances permit.

Most opera singers will say - with some reason - that "real" Stanislavsky acting is impossible for singers.  If you do start to believe yourself to be as physically distraught as a woman about to commit Hari-Kari or throw yourself off some battlements, your breathing pattern (essential for true "naturalistic" acting) will sabotage your singing and it will all go wrong.

Great stuff, Ron and Reiner!
It reminds me of how much I learned having my last opera produced by a really good director and fine conductor and singers (at ENO). Despite the fact that the librettist and I had put the thing together on the basis of from-scratch workshops spread over about three years, when it came to blocking rehearsals there was obviously much still to be done - by me, I mean: what Ron mentions above about music 'fixing' aspects of pacing and thus delimiting stage movement in opera is very, very true. Time and again we found that, for a set of actions to 'work', very slight adjustments were necessary to the musical fabric. I didn't always agree to revise, but I'd say that on a majority of such occasions I was more than happy to tweak the score to accomodate these - either by making small cuts or writing a couple of extra bars etc. And, as a result, the piece is stronger, I think. Great learning experience, and I feel very lucky to have learned about this 'from the inside'. Having repetiteured for a small summer festival opera company in the States for several years, I thought I'd learned most of it already - but no!

And I think it's because Britten had already been collaborating with Auden for an extended period, and was evidently composing with a clear idea in his mind of how the scene would look and "feel" on stage?  Perhaps the frosty reception GRIMES got from the academic musical establishment - and the subsequent move to Aldeburgh, establishing the EOG etc - was because it had not adhered to what were considered "norms"?

Since we've now drifted miles and miles from the topic on the card, Ron, maybe we should sieve off this little diversion about treading the boards into a place of its own?  Mainly so that the main topic doesn't get hijacked by Stagecraft 101?

I think you're in a minority of composers who would consider tweaks to make staging work, Martle!   

I think that's increasingly becoming a standard way to work?   I notice that Peter Sellars, for example, has almost always been involved in his new opera projects from the outset, working with both librettist and composer whilst the piece is still in the formative stages.

The interesting question, though, is whether the piece could then be given an entirely different production by a different stage director later, and what the composer's feelings about that would be?    Which leads on to the question about whether a new staging would find ideas, or interpretations, which the "original" had not? 

This is a really interesting topic.  I wondered if anybody had experiences of conductors taking charge of the production (like Mahler, Toscanini and Karajan used to do).  Is there any current conductor who does this nowadays?

I saw it in Cardiff and shan't disagree with you on that one - though most of the singing was pretty good, and some of the orchestral playing was outstanding, so fortunately it was still a very powerful cycle!

Back in 2001, Nicholas Payne and Paul Daniel - then ENO's General Director and Music Director - attempted to direct Il trovatore.  For the result, please refer to your comment on the Gergiev Ring.  However in the case of ENO's Trovatore the music wasn't even that good, and the singers were all miscast, with the noble exception of Clive Bayley's Ferrando.

I don't see any problem with that - Wagner always intended to stage his operas himself, and therefore left the conducting to suitably-qualified conductors