I wonder to what extent that's because visual directors tend to underestimate the extent to which a musical composer's (particularly an opera composer's) intentions might be relatively abstract/non-traditional.

On the other hand, it was certainly felt by many that Gawain was Birtwistle's attempt at some kind of stylistic reconnaissance with Wagner - do you think that's an illusion created by the production style, or mightn't the latter be picking up on something that is at some level present within the music?

Well, I sometimes get the impression that the mainstream theatrical world, from which plenty of directors come, is even more conservative than the world of music?

That style of acting that Richard describes irritates me to death as well - equally much in Parsifal as in Birtwistle - but I find it's more characteristic of a certain British theatrical tradition (which I'm not sure has really moved on much since the Restoration, as far as the mainstream is concerned) than what I see elsewhere.

I wonder how many opera/theatre/film directors really see music (when employed in the latter two cases) as really being as important as the other elements with which they work?

A very brief post before I dash off elsewhere.

Birtwistle's operas tend to be opera as ritual: indeed, the whole ethos of ritual seems a vital part of his creative impetus whether words are there or not, and it's not very common elsewhere in opera which forms the standard repertoire, which makes mounting it a major headache for those responsible for the first production. Operas which might be said to have a similar ritual aspect, such as Tippett's King Priam and the Britten Church Parables have now had several later productions which have ignored the original suggested directions or found a totally different way of viewing the pieces.

 The ROH premiere productions of both Gawain and The Minotaur are all we have to go on right now, and it's noticeable that the director of the latter was part of the production team for the former, so it's perhaps not surprising that something of the same presentation has been carried over. We're in danger of judging both operas through those productions we have available as evidence, though, and it's extremely rarely that one production of anything can ever hope to tell the whole story.

I entirely agree with you that what ONE stage production may find in a piece is one director's subjective view only.  (You and I have already discussed KING PRIAM in that respect vis-a-vis the ROH and Kent Opera productions).

However, with the world premiere of a new work by a well-known and authoratative composer, it may very well happen that the composer seeks to control how the piece is staged...  either directly, or indirectly through choice of director/designer, or a combination of both.  Some will say that no-one knows better than the composer how the piece should be staged.  Others would say that sometimes composers need some professional advice about how to realise their intentions for the piece in its staging.

There have also been stagings which have enraged or infuriated composers.  Ligeti was so angered by the ENO staging of LE GRAND MACABRE that he demanded to have his name taken off the publicity for the piece - although he subsequently relented on this after extensive schmoozing.  Nevertheless I would argue that the ideas presented in that production were all latent in the work, and represented a valid viewpoint and interpretation.  Another example is Golijov's AINADAMAR...  the work was universally panned by the critics when it opened.  Golijov was then approached by an experienced director who braved the composer's fury and told him a few home truths about the over-preachy libretto and dull, static production.  As a result, the libretto was reworked, much of the piece rewritten, and a new, entirely restaged version has enjoyed rather more success than the first one.

As I haven't seen or heard MINOTAUR yet, I don't have a view...  but the converse of a production mining the libretto for its "meaning" is that a work which doesn't have much intrinsic "meaning" (a charge laid against MINOTAUR by others, not me) can't be mined.   The director is then faced with a rather stark choice...   present the piece on stage "as is" and plead integrity with the material composed...  go to the composer and propose changes which might help the work succeed better...  OR add a raft of external, unsupportable or extraneous elements to try to "make something of it" against the composer's wishes.   (Obviously the third option is something that should never be done in any reasonable circumstances).

[EXAMPLE: I was consulted on a libretto last year, by an American composer - possibly with a view to staging it. He'd written the libretto himself.  Act I (there were three Acts in total) had 11 different changes of scene (including a shift from the C17th to the present, and from a Siberian village to Manhattan) and included 56 named characters, plus chorus.  I pleaded with him to make some alterations, but he wasn't open to these ideas.  (The stuff in the C17th was irrelevant to the main plot and only confused things - it could easily have been removed, and replaced by a scene in a Public Library where the main character finds out about his family past).]


"Generic acting" is a curse to which all opera productions are prone, not only new works - the primary cause is low budgets. This cuts rehearsal time to the barest minimum,  resulting in "functional" productions.  Performers under those circumstances will go for a "what will get me out of this with minimum risk?" strategy, and fall back on standard formulaic drama-college stuff  (if, indeed, they ever had any drama training - many opera-singers haven't).   Adventurous and innovative work needs proper rehearsal time to prepare, and then more time to bed-in.  Few opera companies have that rehearsal time to offer - one of the defences I would put up for Glyndebourne, for example, is that they rehearse things more fully than any other company I know of.  (I know performers for next year's Festival who are already in rehearsal).   Of course, innovative work also needs the innovators capable of bringing it off - but really we're not in short supply of high-quality creative talent these days.  McVicar, the Aldens, Lloyd Jones, Keith Warner, Tim Albery, Julia Pevsner, Dmitry Bertmann, Jude Kelly, Andreas Homoki, Barrie Kosky - the list goes on.  Sadly it's the lesser-known works (which inevitably includes the new works) which get squeezed hardest on budget, since their potential to deliver a return in the Box Office is less...  and this becomes a Law Of Diminishing Returns and a cyclic process of under-resourcing

Agreed, although it was largely economic necessity which was the cause    Perhaps L'ORFEO itself might have filled a larger stage - a huge orchestral line-up, choruses of nymphs and shepherds etc.   I listened to some of POPPEA last night from the Proms, but I was unconvinced by the pseudo-Orfeo reorechestration...  heaps of instruments which aren't in the score (from a composer who had previously been scrupulously accurate about scoring), and apparently in flat contradiction to what we know the orchestral numbers were in Naples public theatres

We shall await your libretto with interest.  Does this mean you may retrench on your oft-stated intent not to write stage pieces in future? 

And now I have to pop outside - we have an eclipse scheduled in a mo

For wht it may or may not be thought to be worth (if anything), many of the observations made here by Richard and Reiner happen to strike a chord with part of the (ir?)rationale behind my own remark a long while ago that one of my principal ambitions as a composer is never to write a stage work...