Baroque opera stage directors discuss their craft ... it Real.pdfBaroque opera follows a different...

Early Music America Winter 2006 27

AT THE TURN OF THE 18th century, when Spanish colonists brought

opera to South America, their Puritancounterparts at higher latitudes wereentertaining themselves rather moresoberly. Operas were few and farbetween in the northern colonies: TheBeggar’s Opera was performed in NewYork in 1750, La serva padrona inCharleston in 1790. It was only in the1920s, with a series of revivals undertak-en at Smith College, that earlier operafinally made it to the North Americanstage. The first production, Monteverdi’sL’incoronazione di Poppea in 1926 – givenwithout the closing love duet betweenPoppea and Nero – was recognized inthe Boston press as a “New Precedentand Example.” “We in America have yetto hear an opera of Handel on thestage,” the critic observed, “thoughGermany teems with them.”

Perhaps it is still too early to say ifNorth America will ever quite be teemingwith Baroque opera, but the field hascertainly come far, with much of thatgrowth occurring in recent decades. Asthe early music endeavor became secure-ly established in the 1980s and ’90s, full-scale historical reconstructions began tobe mounted of many long-overlookedstage works.

Why did Baroque opera languish forso long? Marshall Pynkoski, today direc-tor of the Toronto-based Baroque com-pany Opera Atelier – the busiest touringarts organization in Canada – remem-bers attending Tafelmusik concertswhen he and partner Jeannette Zinggwere still classical ballet dancers workingat the Canadian Opera. They were“absolutely flabbergasted” by theexpressive richness of the 17th-centuryFrench music the orchestra had begunto program. When he and Zingg, who isOpera Atelier’s choreographer, saw that

the music came from operas they hadnever heard of, “we started speakingwith friends and colleagues about whywe never saw these works in the theater.And everyone said, ‘It doesn’t work anylonger.’ We’d been overwhelmed by thetheatricality of the music, yet we werebeing told that if you added sets andcostumes, it would all somehow dis-solve.”

“If you took theater classes in the’70s, as I did,” recalls James Middleton,“you got the idea that nothing entertain-ing ever happened in the theater prior toabout 1920.” Middleton, founder anddirector of the Baroque opera companyEx Machina, which flourished from1986-1997 in Minneapolis, had been inlove with the look of Baroque theaterever since discovering Margarete Bauer-Heinhold’s richly illustrated book on thesubject at the age of 12 (“when I was a

MakingIt RealPH

OTO

: JO

HN CRISPIN

A scene from Francesca Caccini's LaLiberazione di Ruggiero, directed by Drew Minter at Smith College in the Five College Opera Project.

By Shulamit Kleinerman

Baroque opera stage directors discuss their craft

28 Winter 2006 Early Music America

weird seventh grader”). “So I knew thatthere was this fantastic world of illu-sionistic stagecraft that was held in deepdisrepute. And I wanted to understandwhat it was that made these shows cook.These incredibly talented painters andscenic engineers could do incrediblestuff. ‘And we look at it now because wehave electricity, and we think we’re bet-ter at it than they were?’ I thought.‘That’s got to be nonsense.’”

The impression is probably still wide-spread today that the bewigged, bowingancien régime people who created Baroqueopera were either impossibly quaint orsnowed under by seriousness, and thatthey didn’t know how to have a goodtime, at least not in any sense that wepostmoderns can relate to. The conven-tions of the form can seem too compli-cated: the stylized gestures, the musicalmannerisms of recitative, the stillnessthat surrounds the exit aria.

But then, that’s why they call itbaroque. By the time Pynkoski heard

Tafelmusik, the early music movementwas demonstrating irresistibly how theobservation of historical conventions,far from stifling expressiveness, couldfree it. Inspired by the music, Pynkoskiand Zingg set out to become historicallyinformed about Baroque acting anddancing. After study and research inEurope, they came home and offeredworkshops at a museum in Ontario.Their audiences loved it, “and the com-pany took off from there.”

Middleton’s first love was paintingand drawing, but in art school in the’70s, representational art was out offashion. “I ended up in theater, wherethe ability to draw something thatlooked like something was a usefulskill.” He’d had a taste of Baroqueopera as early as high school, when hedirected a self-starring performance ofPergolesi’s La serva padrona for the dramaclub’s night of one-acts – “we rented aharpsichord and everything.” He got adegree in theater design, and since opera

Scenery design by James Middleton for Il Giasone by Francesco Cavalli, produced by Ex Machina in 1996.

“I ended up in theater, where the ability to drawsomething that looked likesomething was a useful skill. I always analogize Baroque

theater sets to giant pop-up books.”

– James Middleton


design jobs were few and far between,“I started a company to do the kind ofshows I wanted to do – which meant Ihad to learn to direct.” His base was thehands-on sense of Baroque aestheticshe’d internalized from visual art: “Ialways analogize Baroque theater sets togiant pop-up books.”

Other directors, helping to create thefield as they went, approached Baroqueopera by other paths. Catherine Turocyfounded the New York Baroque DanceCompany in 1976 and began directingopera as a natural extension of her workchoreographing and reconstructing the-atrical dance. Since its beginning, theNYBDC has worked in collaborationwith the ensemble Concert Royal,directed by James Richman, Turocy’shusband. It was a pioneering partner-ship; the company’s first opera excerpt,Rameau’s “La Danse,” appeared atLincoln Center in 1977.

Countertenor Drew Minter sang thelead role in the first opera Turocy stage-directed, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, in1984. Today, he is also a director him-self. It’s a telling coincidence, if it’s acoincidence at all, that all the directorsinterviewed here came to Baroque stagedirection from different, related but distinct, fields of expertise.

Jennifer Griesbach was initially inter-ested from an instrumentalist’s perspec-tive. “I felt an instant connection

between the kind of work I was alreadydoing as a continuo player – supportingand creating musical gestures – and thework of choosing and refining bodilygestures for the stage.” While earning amusicology doctorate at UC Berkeley,she began studying Baroque gesture andran the small company Teatro Bacchinowith music director David Morris. Later,she worked on a series of shows asdirectorial assistant to Minter, and shehas also assisted Turocy.

Now a freelance director based inNew York, Griesbach remarks on hergood fortune to be in the “second gen-eration” of North American directorswho focus on Baroque opera. Sheattended Opera Atelier performances athome in Canada during her formativeyears and saw Ex Machina’s productionof La púrpura de la rosa (the first NewWorld opera, performed in Lima in1701) at the American MusicologicalSociety Conference in 1994. “For me,”

Three views of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Left, costume design by James Middleton for the 1991Boston Early Music Festival. Above, Orfeo’s father Apollo comes to transport his son to divineimmortality in the productions of Opera Atelier and (top) the Handel and Haydn Society.

PHOTO

: ER

IC ANTO

NIOU

PHOTO

: BR

UCE ZINGER


she attests, “Baroque opera was immedi-ately captivating from the first time Isaw it staged.”

Artifice and expression Minter suggests that the secret of

bringing these works to life, with alltheir Baroque conventions, is toembrace the larger, unabashed artificethat is the works’ underlying premise.“One of the things we get confusedabout in the modern audience is thisidea that theater must be ‘realistic.’”Baroque opera follows a different logic.“What we are doing is telescoping emo-tions so that these extreme situations arebeing lived through and experienced bythe characters in a very intense way – afull day or more in the space of threehours, and with emotions that have longbeen brewing in the characters’ mindsexpressed in the time it takes to sing ada capo aria.

“It’s highly artificial,” Minteracknowledges, “and you have to accept

that if you’re going to enjoy the form.In fact, I think you’re better off if youcan go much further than mere accept-ance and celebrate that this is going tobe jam-packed emotion. For an 18th-century person, the more artifice, themore fascination and the more truthlying at the bottom.”

In the culture of Baroque nobility,the articulate communication of humansentiment required all the refinements ofart. Middleton’s essay in A Performer’sGuide to Seventeenth-Century Musicdescribes how Baroque opera focuseson the act of expression rather than onaction. “This does not mean to suggestthat nothing happens,” he writes, “butthe things that occur tend to be interiorrather than physical.” He gives as exam-ple the tragic conclusion of Dido andAeneas, in which the heroine’s artfulexpression of emotion in her finallament is more of a theatrical event thanher death itself.

“I think the quickest way into thisstyle is to understand how much isgoing on in a line of text,” Griesbachoffers. “Singers who come to Baroquemusic from later styles are always mar-veling about how much detail you canconvey.”

Of all the expressive conventions ofthe Baroque stage, gesture is surely theone that carries the most mystiquetoday. The movements cultivated in thenoble milieu had to do with a kind ofpublic body consciousness that mayseem foreign now. Even the clothingand footwear were built to enforceupright posture and articulate carriage ofthe arms.

Turocy approaches onstage gesturewith a dancer’s awareness. “Carefulattention is paid to the dynamics of thegesture, the flow from one gesture toanother, and the posture that one finallyrests in after completing a gesture. Theposture must be a piece of living sculp-ture.” She gives a literal example fromRameau’s Pygmalion, a quasi-opera thatTurocy reconstructed for her companyin 1980. (It’s still in the repertoire, withperformances this coming February inNew York, Dallas, and Houston.) Thework is designated an acte de ballet; it’smore than half dance music, but witharias and choruses mixed in. Originally

“There is spiral energy in allthe art. What could have amore natural basis than thisenergy? Our very DNA isformed from spirals. It is the most organic energy in the universe.”

– Drew Minter

On-StageExperienceYour author’s own adventurewith the Baroque stage camewhen I got to play one of apair of dancing shepherdesses(with one shepherd to share)in a performance of JohnBlow’s Venus and Adonis.James Middleton was thestage director and set designerfor the show, which wasproduced by the Early MusicGuild of Seattle in 2005. I tookup Baroque dance during aperiod of tendonitis that keptme from the violin, and I hadthe great pleasure of learningfrom Anna Mansbridge andperforming a bit with hercompany, Seattle Early Dance. Once James started blockingthe figures for each scene,what struck me most was thefineness of all the spatial

relationships between the people on the stage, whether we were mapping out Anna’selegant choreographic symmetries while dancing or simply maintaining an awareness ofour proximity to a nearby god or goddess. To a modern imagination, these Baroquegeometries might sound abstract and impersonal, but the quality I experienced was instead one of clarity and intimacy. – SK

PHOTO

: WILLIAM STICKNEY


the role of the Statue was played by adancer who could also sing recitative –none other than the famous mid-18th-century dancer Marie-Anne de Cupis deCamargo. In the first NYBDC produc-tion, the part was played by AnnMonoyios, a singer who could alsodance. “She got a rave in the reviewfrom Dance Magazine,” Turocy remem-bers.

Turocy has also performed the partherself. “When I come alive, there’s asense of wonder about breath andmovement and reclaiming my body.”Coaching other dancers for the role, “Iask them to find a way of embodyingthese principles themselves. Sometimesthe gesture of the arm will be differentor the head will turn another way.There’s an inner sense of timing that’sdifferent for every person, and for pan-tomime you have to discover that specif-ic, personal quality.”

Turocy, along with other directors,uses paintings and other images as tem-plates for the dancers and singers topractice creating tableaux vivants, imitat-ing the postures depicted in order tointernalize their feel. “What you want,”Griesbach explains, “is that the body ofthe performer starts to have ‘memories’of the life of the character.” Meanwhile,she adds, “the body starts getting usedto finding a healthy balance betweentension and repose, and the performeracquires a kind of bodily sense of theimage they are creating on stage.

“I love the balancing act betweentension and repose, symmetry and asym-metry, dynamic movement and theopposing force that holds it in check.”

Minter is inspired by a similar senseof dynamism. “There is spiral energy inall the art,” he observes, from the twist-ing shapes of draperies or carvedcolumns to the torso of a dancer curv-ing in the opposite direction from apoised arm. “What could have a morenatural basis than this energy? Our veryDNA is formed from spirals. It is themost organic energy in the universe.”

Above left, Opera Atelier’s Jeannette Zingg at the gardens of Versailles. Above, CarolineCopeland in a scene from Handel’s Terpsicore in a production by Concert Royal and the New York Baroque DanceCompany directed by Catherine Turocy.

PHOTO

: JULIE LEMBE

RGER


He convenes “a sort of small class”at the beginning of a period production,“to help people start observing howtheir own body movements intersectwith the shapes that infuse Baroqueart.” The goal is for the artful move-ments to become natural and sponta-neous. “I really want the impulses of themovement to come out of the musicitself. If it looks pasted on, I think peo-ple are better off standing still.” Henotes that Baroque performers wereaided by raked stages, which tilted theperformers forward and freed the armsto move.

Several of the directors liken thestage to a painting in which the directorarranges figures. Minter was pleasedwith a particular moment from his stag-ing of Campra’s L’Europe galante at thispast summer’s Amherst Early MusicFestival. When the character ofDiscorde entered, “the large cast ofprincipals, chorus, and dancers turnedits back and warded her off in waves,kind of like human dominoes, but eachwith his or her own personality andmovement and humanity. The lookreminded me of crowd paintings byItalian painters like Veronese.”

With their passion for analyzingeverything functional, 18th-century peo-ple described social and theatrical ges-ture in systematic, detailed manuals thatare a treasure trove of specific informa-tion. It may be worth considering,though, that these manuals were perhapsless prescriptive than descriptive ofwhat people already did – and still do.Griesbach notes that a commonBaroque mode of gesturing onstage issimply to describe something with thehands, “just like my Italian landlord doesto this day.”

“One must remember the premise of18th-century art: that it is based innature,” says Turocy. “The challenge isto find nature in the artifice of codifiedgestures and postures.” From the audi-ence, Griesbach adds, “You perceive theemotional meaning of the text not onlyvisually, but also viscerally, and as such itbypasses some of our mental filters.”

“If gesture is used as a backup to realfrom-the-heart acting,” Middletonemphasizes, “audiences don’t even knowyou’re doing it. It is, after all, no more

“Everyone said, ‘It doesn’t work any longer.’ We’d been overwhelmed by the theatricality of the music,

yet we were being told that if you added sets and costumes,it would all somehow dissolve.”

– Marshall Pynkoski

A Short History of the Baroque Opera Revival

The burgeoning of Baroque opera in North America has been a collaborative venture onsuch a large scale that any attempt at an account of it is sure to leave out importantcontributors. Nevertheless, here are some highlights:

Helping put Baroque opera on the map before the early music scene could supportsuch grand productions, performances in the ’60s with mainstream stars drew attentionto Handel opera: a Giulio Cesare at New York City Opera with Beverly Sills, an Alcina inDallas (following its triumph in Venice) with Joan Sutherland.

Meanwhile, period practice ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic were gatheringstrength. Americans active abroad included William Christie, who had moved to France in1971 and whose Atys in 1987 with his then eight-year-old ensemble Les Arts Florissantsbrought tragédie lyrique to the public eye. Stephen Stubbs’s 1987 production in Belgiumof Stefano Landi’s La morte d’Orfeo inaugurated the ensemble Tragicomedia. In 1990,the British conductor Nicholas McGegan— music director of San Francisco’s PhilharmoniaBaroque Orchestra since 1985—became artistic director of the International Handel-Festival Göttingen, presenting fully staged operas there for the first time since the 1920s,when the festival had spurred the 20th-century Handel revival. Academic and performerAlan Curtis, who would later found the ensemble Il Complesso Barocco, was directingstaged operas everywhere from Berkeley to Venice, including an Ariodante at La Scala in1980.

Curtis’s pioneering staged performances in Berkeley in the late ‘60s, though theyrelied on modern pick-up bands, brought the operas of Monteverdi and Cavalli to life fora generation of American theatergoers and scholars. Beginning in the ’70s, BanchettoMusicale, the ensemble directed by Martin Pearlman that was later to be renamed BostonBaroque, was offering concert and semi-staged premieres of many works. The WaverlyConsort, founded in 1964, staged Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in 1980. Catherine Turocy’sNew York Baroque Dance Company, with Concert Royal providing the music under JamesRichman, presented its first staged excerpts in 1977, and the first opera Turocy stagedwas a Gluck Orfeo in 1984.

The first full American reconstruction staging was an Orlando at WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis in 1983, with stage machines modeled on period examples. DrewMinter sang the lead role, Tafelmusik was the core of the orchestra, and McGeganconducted and directed. McGegan was also stage and music director for the bank-breaking 1985 production of Handel’s Teseo at the Boston Early Music Festival. For itsbiennial fully-staged operas ever since, BEMF has relied on stage direction from bothAmericans (such as Minter) and Europeans (such as the French Gilbert Blin and the British Jack Edwards).

Instrumental ensembles producing opera with original instruments have includedARTEK, with a semi-staged Monteverdi Orfeo in 1991 and performances of The FairyQueen and Poppea. In 1996 the Berkeley Festival premiered Alessandro Scarlatti’sL’Aldimiro, the lost score for which had recently been discovered in the UC Berkeleylibrary. Philharmonia Baroque was the pit band for the Berkeley Festival’s 1998 MarkMorris staging of Rameau’s opera-ballet Platée, with extravagant costumes by IsaacMizrahi. Along with Morris’s other re-stagings, including a Dido and Aeneas premiered in1989 in Brussels and Boston, his Platée represents perhaps the most successful recastingof the splendor of Baroque opera in a modern aesthetic. —SK


artificial than a Baroque aria – which isextremely natural-seeming in the handsof a Monteverdi or a Handel.”

Everyone is a participantMiddleton insists that Baroque opera

is far less rarefied than it might seem.“It was a great deal more like popularculture than we make it now. Just aspeople will plop themselves for sevenhours in front of the TV to watch thosedesperate housewives do desperatethings, people would go down to thetheater every night of the season towatch the same desperate Baroque god-desses 20 nights in a row. This is theparadox of historic staging: if the thing’spurpose is to entertain, and it doesn’t,then it’s not correct at all, no matterhow ‘authentic’ it is. Whether you usefancy gestures or modern slouching, youstill have to sing it like you mean it.

“I don’t think gesture is the lost lan-guage people crack it up to be,” he adds.“Bugs Bunny, Bart Simpson, even theSouth Park kids all express themselvesvia the same system of remarkably pan-human signs.”

The Looney Tunes ensemble of the’40s and ’50s, he adds, “was by far the20th century’s best commedia troupe.”With these connections to popular cul-ture, Middleton brings an irreverentapproach to directing the material. “Istart with Bugs Bunny or I Love Lucy.When people realize that the protago-nists in Così fan tutte are Lucy and Ethel,it all falls into place and you don’t haveto explain a thing.”

Coaching other people in the expres-sion of emotion is the central mysteryof directing. Minter recalls his firstshow, when Nicholas McGegan, whohadn’t had time to prepare a productionof Handel’s Radamisto in Göttingen,asked him to take over. “I was woefullybad at it. I tried to micromanage andreally couldn’t respond to all the differ-ent performers and their individual tal-ents. But as time went along, I havelearned to pay more attention to theother participants and to work more atcreating an ensemble out of a group ofoften disparate singers. That is the chal-lenging part of the process, but it’s alsoenormous fun and an enormous privi-lege, for as director you get to partici-

pate and assist everyone in realizingtheir talent.”

“I learned an immense amount fromDrew,” Griesbach notes of her appren-ticeship, “not only about Baroque opera,but about how to direct deeply andeffectively in any style.”

On the job as a choreographer,Turocy learned the craft of direction byobserving her European collaborators’different methods. One was Jean-LouisMartinoty: “His attention to dramaticmotivation for everyone, even the shyestpeasant, was extremely instructive.”When director and choreographer dis-agreed about the role of some dances,“he advised me that as choreographer,before having any artistic meetings withthe stage director, I should imagine howI would stage the entire work and whatrole the dance would play in making thiswork come to life.” Meanwhile, “PierLuigi Pizzi’s approach was to construct amoving painting. No discussion aboutcharacter or motivation. What little ges-ture he gave was in relation to the set. Ilearned the power of posture and ges-ture in relationship to space and visualdesign.”

Today, Turocy says, she “choreo-graphs every note of the opera as if itwere an ever-changing painting, beingsensitive to the lighting and the line of

beauty in the overall construct of eachframe or scene.” Griesbach adds, “Whatstruck me about Catherine’s work wasthat she has a remarkable sense of howto use supporting actors to sharpen andfocus the impact of the scene both visu-ally and emotionally.”

When preparing a new opera,Griesbach begins with the text and con-siders the music in turn as the compos-er’s commentary on the libretto. ForMinter, the music’s interpretive powerhas implications for the directorialprocess. “We need to be realizing themusic in the staging,” he insists. “Ialways encourage the singers to learn themusic first, so that their movementsflow with the music. Then we ornamentthe actual words with the hands andeyes and smaller body motions.”

Pynkoski prefers to think of a divi-sion of labor between dancers, whotranslate the music into movement, andsingers, who articulate language. Insingers he looks for “a certain physicalrelaxation and weight that allows thebody to respond to text physically.Singers all say they love text, but 90% of the time it means that they love

Below, soprano Ava Pine in the ConcertRoyal/New York Baroque Dance Companyproduction of Handel’s Terpsicore in 2005.

PHOTO

: JULIE LEMBE

RGER


vowels. We need singers who are willingsometimes to compromise voice for the sake of drama, to gasp or cry orscream. It’s not a recording. We don’tneed beautiful baubles.”

“I’m looking to create maximumexpressiveness and maximum beauty,”Griesbach declares, “and if it comesdown to a contest, I want expressivenessto win.”

Turocy looks for the real-time inter-action of performers responding toeach other and to the audience. She hasan eye out for performers who canimprovise – not only singers, butdancers as well. “In our company, partof the training is for the dancers tointernalize the style so that they canimprovise ornamentation for their solos,as we know dancers were trained to doin the period.”

Pynkoski describes the nature of therelationship between performers andaudience in Baroque theater. “The job

of the pre-Romantic actor is not to feelsomething on the stage themselves, butto make us feel what they describe. In aBaroque theater, the lights stay up. Weall accept the artifice, and so we have anactive experience of the actors relatingwith us, saying, ‘I know you’re out there,and I’m talking to you.’ Romantic operaexists to turn the audience into voyeurs;Baroque opera exists to turn the audi-ence into participants. This is why peo-ple thought Baroque opera wouldn’twork – because actors today are trainedto feel for the audience.”

He links such voyeurism with thepassive consumption of modern enter-tainment media. “The ability to feelintense emotion is being wrung out ofus in our daily lives. Baroque opera isgood for us. At Opera Atelier, we knowthat people leave feeling more alivebecause we’ve gotten letters from them,and they’re practically hysterical tellingus about it.”

Middleton describes how Baroqueopera spoke to the most intimate con-cerns of its first audiences. “The operaseria was in so many ways a pattern bookfor living the noble life, which was allabout the subjugation of one’s passionsto the ideal of duty. But this was seen tobe deliciously sad, and even though thesacrifice could be made only at cost tothe injured individualism, it articulatedthe individual experience all the moreclearly.” He gives the example of Dido,whose rejection of Aeneas when hewould rather stay with her may bafflemodern audiences. She is compelled byher duty to fall back into line before thegods she has defied. “The Baroque audi-ence was able to deliciously project itselfinto Dido’s sacrifice because thelove/duty conflict was absolutely clear.”

“When I was studying this repertoryin school,” Griesbach muses, “we werealways talking about ‘the conflictbetween love and duty.’ At first, thatphrase seemed reductive of the varietyof what was going on and not so rele-vant to our modern lives. But as I’veworked, as I’ve gotten older and had alittle more life experience, I’ve becomemore attuned to the balance we are alltrying to strike between the mind andthe heart, between public morality and

Continued on page 48

“As I’ve gotten older and had a little more life

experience, I’ve become moreattuned to the balance we are all trying to strike between themind and the heart, betweenpublic morality and private

desire. I haven’t found a placewhere that material is more

clearly worked out than Baroque opera.” – Jennifer Griesbach

Stephanie Novacek and Colin Ainsworth in Opera Atelier's production of Lully's Armide.

PHOTO

: BR

UCE ZINGER


Join us!Become a member of Early Music America. Be a part of the organizationthat serves the entire early music community—performers, presenters,ensembles, scholars, instrument builders, and audience members.

Membership levels

one set of materials, two directory listings

o Studentat an accredited institution; no overseas

o Senior65 and over

o Overseasoutside US or Canada

o Organization, by income:To $100,000 $85$100,001-$200,000 $125Over $200,000 $150

o Instrument Makers $65

Make a giftWe need your help and support.Please make a generous gift today.

o Benefactor ($1,000+)o Patron ($500-$999)o Sponsor ($350-$499)o Friend ($200-$349)o Contributor ($100-$199)o Supporter (under $100)

o My gift will be matched by myemployer (please enclose form).

Early Music America is a 501(c)(3) nonprofitorganization. Contributions are tax-deductible aspermitted by law.

Name ________________________________________________________________________

Organization __________________________________________________________________

Address ______________________________________________________________________

City ____________________________________ State _________ Zip ___________________

Phone _____________________________ email _____________________________________

o Check enclosed payable to Early Music America (US funds on a US bank)

o Charge my o VISA o Mastercard

Card # _____________________________________________________________________

Exp. date _______ Signature __________________________________________________

Mail to: Early Music America, 2366 Eastlake Avenue East, #429, Seattle, WA 98102;fax to: 206-720-6290; call 888-SACKBUT; [email protected]

#

o Individual $55

o Family $65

$30

$45

$65


private desire. I haven’t found a placewhere that material is more clearlyworked out than Baroque opera.”

Staging an approach Inevitably, there are some obstacles

to reconstructing these works today. “Iwould love to do a production withoutstringent financial limits,” Minter volun-teers. “I mean, if one could actually doCesti’s Il Pomo d’oro and do all the granddesigns and stage machines and endlessbolts of brocades, what’s not to covet?”He would also like to direct a show inone of the working 18th-century the-aters that survive in Drottningholm(Sweden) and Ceský Krumlov (CzechRepublic). “Real candles and all the can-dle stands and footlights would be onthe wish list as well – plus the huge per-sonnel it would take to man them!”

Middleton imagines ruefully how eas-ily a major opera house could do a pro-duction on the truly lavish scale of theperiod. “If the Met did one of theseshows with all the bells and whistles, itwould knock people on their ears – andit would still be their cheapest show ofthe season.”

Some obstacles are more subtle. “ExMachina went several seasons doingthings in churches and various placeswhere we just didn’t have the theatricalrigging to do the wonderful things thatthey were able to do in the Baroque the-ater. So when we finally were able to flygoddesses around, I was in heaven.” Butthe moment was derailed by a kind ofculture clash. “Here’s this thrilling, vitalmoment of some goddess arriving fromthe heavens, this moment of utter seri-ousness and urgency and Baroquepower, a person who comes wheelingout of the sky – and the audience wasjust rolling on the floor laughing.”

“Sometimes I wish we could just stop the opera and let people get overit,” says Pynkoski, who has seen a simi-lar phenomenon. He notes, though, that such laughter can be simply anexpression of delight.

But Middleton learned his lesson. “Ifyou’re going to go flying goddessesaround before audiences today, you haveto do it once as a joke – a throwaway toget people used to the idea that this is athing that happens – and then, the sec-ond time, they will be suitably awed.”

Sometimes the forms of Baroqueopera can baffle even insiders. “One ofthe hardest things for me,” Griesbachconfesses, “is to come up with freshsolutions for the staging of da capo arias.The moment when a da capo aria opens

itself up to you and all of a suddenmakes sense as a dramatic through-lineis glorious. One hint I like to rememberis something that director StephenWadsworth once said in an interview,that he is drawn to Handel because, inHandel’s hands, the da capo aria becomesa perfect image of the way we think,repeating a thought partially here, fullyover there, coloring it this way and that,moving onto a new idea and thenreturning to consider the old in a newlight.”

Lacking the same cultural educationas the operas’ first audiences, artiststoday may have to work to discover con-text that Baroque theatergoers mightsimply have understood. Pynkoskidescribes being puzzled by Gluck’sIphigénie en Tauride. “I was listening to itfor years and I loved it – I’d stagedsome of it in my head – but I still didn’tget it. I couldn’t understand the relation-ship between Oreste and Pylade. In theirmusic they sounded like two lovers – the

intertwining of their voices almost inthe same range, this fantastic sexual-sounding blend.” Pynkoski finallyemailed a friend in classics who repliedthat the two characters, in the 18th century, were one of the most famous classical homosexual male couples.

“The moment we were able to say,‘They’re lovers,’ it all became clear.Onstage we gave them an ease together,an ability to touch that called up all thathistory of intimacy.” In the context ofthe men’s tenderness, the heroine’s char-acter took clearer shape. “Without thosemoments of softness and gentlenessherself, Iphigénie became powerful in a completely different way.”

Both within the early music field andwithout, directors sometimes choose tobridge the historical gap with an updat-ed staging. “If I were to do a companyagain,” Middleton muses, “I would notprivilege period style as I did with ExMachina – indeed, we abandoned strictperiod staging towards the end. I woulddo some shows archaeologically, othersnot. Doing it all one way can get sotwee so fast. This doesn’t mean I’vechanged my ideas about the viability ofperiod style – the use of Baroque cos-tume, scenery, gesture, and lighting isexactly analogous to the use of periodinstruments, and we find out incrediblethings about these shows when we letthem speak their own language.” Thechoice of whether or not to do a showin period style, he warns, is only thejumping-off place for the work of adirector. “Whether you do an archaeo-logical reconstruction or set it in a gasstation on Mars, you have to do thesame work to make the thing live.Unfortunately, people often mistake thedecision to do a show in a particularstyle for the act of directing.”

For directors who are committed toperiod practice, updates can raise thequestion of exactly which elements tomodernize and which to retain. “Mypreference would be to do Baroque inperiod dress and period gesture,” Minteroffers. “If I update the production inclothing and setting, I usually updatesome of the gesture, too. I do not thinkperiod gesture works wonderfully inmodern dress; it must be modified, otherwise it creates a dissonance.”

“Right now there is nograssroots effort for opera, and there is not a venue foraccidental discovery. We needBaroque opera nightclubs with intimate performancesevery Thursday night.” – Catherine Turocy

Making It RealContinued from page 34


“I’ve experimented with usingBaroque gesture in different ways,”Griesbach says, “and I’m going to havethe chance really to push the envelopethis year working on a project with TheWooster Group, an amazing experimen-tal theater troupe that is part of thedowntown scene here in New York.”Griesbach is assisting director ElizabethLeCompte and the group as a whole increating a version of Cavalli’s La Didonethat will travel to the Brussels Kaai -theater in May of 2007. The group isexploring Baroque gesture and perform-ance practice, which may be integratedwith the video technology and audiosoundscapes they will be using. “We hadsome serious fun in the first workshopof the project last spring, and I can tellthat the process and the product aregoing to be interesting.”

Looking to the futureEven in the last 10 years, Baroque

opera has been establishing itself evermore securely in the North Americanmusical landscape. Middleton recalls hisfirst production at Indiana University,Handel’s Agrippina, when modern voiceteachers didn’t want their students totake part. “They said, ‘Your voice willfreeze like that.’ And this was in 1996!”He staged a Handel Alcina there twoyears ago (an updated production thatset Alcina’s enchanted island in a fantas-tical 18th-century aesthetic that gaveway to a severe modern look, with theescaping mortals costumed in post-Desert Storm rebel fatigues). “Almostthe entire cast were modern rep singers,whose teachers wanted them to get uptheir Baroque chops.”

The price of such security, though,may be a loss of the sense of explo-ration that was a necessary part of earlyopera stagings 20 years ago. “Right nowthere is no grassroots effort for opera,”Turocy laments, “and there is not avenue for accidental discovery.” Shemakes a novel suggestion. “We needBaroque opera nightclubs with intimateperformances every Thursday night,where people can eat and drink” – amodern re-creation of the social sceneat Baroque theaters. “It will attract ayounger audience and give younger per-formers a chance to gain experience.

When word getsaround, people out-side of our smallworld will becomeengaged and even-tually supportstaged produc-tions.”

Purveyors ofearly music some-times feel pressedto make a continuedcase for its “rele-vance” to the pres-ent day. “I’m afraidthat as a culture weare having a harderand harder timeidentifying acrossdifferences,”Griesbach suggests,“including histori-cal differences. Weare not trained tosee through intowhat is held incommon. I’m notsure what to doabout this exceptto keep reachingout to people andputting the workout there.”

“You get theaudience that youeducate by theworks you perform,” Pynkoski insists.“You just have to choose repertoire thatyou find thrilling.” Turocy, likewise,returns to basics. “This is not a mystery:good performances attract and buildaudiences. We need more good work,and there will be an enthusiasticresponse.”

“In Minnesota,” Middleton remi-nisces, “we built an absolutely loyal fol-lowing out of people who wouldn’t havebeen caught dead at the ‘real’ opera –some of them were radical fringe exper-imental theater types. I didn’t know whythey wanted to see our shows. I was justwormholed into my own head, doingthe shows I wanted to do.”

In 1991, Ex Machina put on whatmay have been the first American stag-ing of Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazionedi Ruggiero dall’Isola d’Alcina. At the inter-

mission, Middleton was introduced to ayoung child in the audience who waseager for the second act to begin. “I hadnever been so moved as hearing thatthis kid – whose cultural currency wasjust not early 17th-century monodydrama – this kid couldn’t wait to getback and see what was going to happennext. That may have been the proudestmoment for me.” A former preschool teacher and erstwhile studentof Baroque dance, Shulamit Kleinerman playsMedieval and Renaissance music, writes and lec-tures about music history, and teaches historicalarts workshops for school-age children in Seattle.She can be found online at shulamitk.net.

Adonis and the Huntsmen (left to right,Glenn Guhr, Sid Law, David Stutz, Brian Cum -mings) in John Blow’s The Masque of Venusand Adonis, directed by James Middletonfor the Early Music Guild of Seattle in 2005.

“I don’t think gesture is the lost languagepeople crack it up to be. Bugs Bunny, BartSimpson, even the South Park kids all

express themselves via the same system ofremarkably pan-human signs.”

– James Middleton

PHOTO

: WILLIAM STICKNEY


2000 North ParkwayMemphis Tennessee 38112

PERFORMANCE PRACTICEIssues and Approaches

4-6 March 2007• Scholarly papers on a wide variety of topics

• Recitals and lecture recitals featuring historically informed approaches to performance

• Keynote address “The Past is a Foreign Country: Challenges for Performers and Editors” by Christopher Hogwood on Tuesday, March 6 at 8:00 p.m.

• Performance of Mendelssohn’s St. Paul by the Rhodes Singers, Rhodes MasterSingers, and the Mem-phis Symphony Orchestra on Monday, March 5 at 7:30

HARM NIAO

Baroque opera stage directors discuss their craft ... it Real.pdfBaroque opera follows a different...

Documents

Transcript of Baroque opera stage directors discuss their craft ... it Real.pdfBaroque opera follows a different...