Which director do you love and which do you loathe?
Here are a few to think about
Dmitiri Tcherniakov - his new Macbeth and Dialogues des Carmilites have just come out
Oliver Py - Les contes d'Hoffmann and Tristan und Isolde count as recent releases
Martin Kusej - his new Rusalka is getting some good reviews, I loved his Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk and even more his Die Zauberflote from Zurich. What a fantastic production
Calixto Bieto - I have his Wozzeck DVD and you know I have never bottom through the first few minutes.
Please add and amend and give your views. When you buy an opera DVD is there any director that really you must see or must avoid.
Interesting. The stage director has so far never been a driving factor when I buy an opera on DVD. In fact, I don't really care who the director was. Instead, I choose which version to buy judged by the performers (singers, conductor and orchestra) and then followed by a sample of it if I can on youtube, written reviews, opinions and TC Top 100 etc.
But a director can make or break a production even with good singers. Look at the recent Rigoletto release with Florez and Damrau. Lenhoff is the director and this is a strange production.
Other directors to think about.
Robert Wilson -his Tristan and his Madame Butterfly
Zeffirelli - bloated productions from the Met
Pier luigi pizzi - his la traviata from Madrid springs to mind
Christoph Marthaler -love his katia kabanova and le nozze, yet to see his tristan
I love many of the Robert Carsen's productions I've watched.
About Tcherniakov, I think he has too much of the 'konzept' school for my taste. The Carmelites production is divorced from the music and the text, so I don't find it interesting.
Same could be said of Bieito, but in the case of Wozzeck (I watched this production live in the theater), I really enjoyed the staging.
From Olivier Py, I've watched recently Les Huguenots, at La Monnaie. A heavily stylized evocation of French Renaissance, very beautiful in the eyes, managing colors and symbolism, with Cross and knife being the same thing... Good ideas, but again lack of connection with the opera libretto and music.
About Kusej, his Lady Macbeth is indeed aggressive... perhaps a little bit too aggressive. Haven't yet watched this Rusalka.
I agree - intimately emotional Eugene Onegin at the Met, Les Boreades breathing the essence of wind and weather, and Dialogues des Carmelites with a heartstopping final scene among others.
I found the set for his Contes D'hoffmann rather convoluted and complicated, and the costumes too odd. Wouldn.t go out of the way to buy anything directed by him.
Martin Kusej - his new Rusalka is getting some good reviews, I loved his Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk and even more his Die Zauberflote from Zurich. What a fantastic production
Waiting for Rusalka with some trepidation. His M22 Don Giovanni was really all about violence against women (brutalised underwear models), but his recent Fliegende Hollander from De Nederlandse Opera was effective in conveying Senta and the Hollander's status as eternal outsiders.
Calixto Bieto - I have his Wozzeck DVD and you know I have never bottom through the first few minutes.
I struggled through the whole of his Don Giovanni, but Peter Sellars and Claus Guth have done DG the drug addict much better. However I'd like to see his recent Parsifal, mainly because I enjoyed Andrew Richards' blog about working with him.
Benoît Jacquot. May his firstborn turn against him, his steak always be overcooked, every parking space in the lot be occupied, and every radio station he switches on be playing Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli.
Laurent Pelly's infectious sense of fun and silliness brings gems such as La Fille du Regiment and Orphee aux Enfers to life:
although I didn't think he was well matched to the more serious Giulio Cesare (but then I'm spoiled forever by David McVicar's Glyndebourne masterpiece.)
I think Pizzi often has very visually beautiful stagings.
I generally like McVicar.
I agree with Nat that Tcherniakov's staging of The Gambler was a stroke of genius.
I'm ambivalent about Kusej. Probably I'll have to say - too out there for my taste.
I love Robert Carsen.
Oh and by the way, welcome to the forum, new member Yashin!
I agree - intimately emotional Eugene Onegin at the Met, Les Boreades breathing the essence of wind and weather, and Dialogues des Carmelites with a heartstopping final scene among others.
I second (or is it fourth?) that admiration of Carsen, including some of his productions that haven't received as much notice here. I particularly like his Rosenkavalier, lavishly updated to 1911, the date of the opera's premiere.
I don't really know him, but I did like the concept of his Macbeth, how he separates the audience from what happens on stage with a semi-transparent curtain.
Calixto Bieto - I have his Wozzeck DVD and you know I have never bottom through the first few minutes.
I quite like Beito's stagings. I thought the Fidelio he did in Munich was rather brilliant.
The Parsifal he did at La Monnaie had some very interesting ideas.
Also, I quite like Stefan Herheim and David McVicar.
Kaspar Bech Holten, the new director of Opera at ROH, is responsible for the Copenhagen Ring and the new "tortured artist" Tannhauser. I found them both fantastic and fascinating, but I know they get a lot of people's backs up due to liberties with the original story. The bonus in the Ring is the interview with a monarch who can talk about more than horses!
Actually having been rude to Mr Lepage about his elephantine Ring, I like his other productions:
This captures the paranoid inverted world of the book very well:
The updating to 50's US works in this:
And the Damnation de Faust that you can see on Met Player, which makes inventive and apposite use of projections, is one of the most visually arresting productions I have ever seen.
Patrice Chereau has had a long, impressive career, from his famous centennial Bayreuth Ring (best Walkure ever!) to more recent offerings like his La Scala Tristan and Janacek's House of the Dead from Aix.
Yes, I think Lepage has done well in his other productions, the current Ring excepted.
Whoever did that La Pietra del Paragone with the flying pancakes is a genius as well.
Edit: his name is Pierrick Sorin - does anybody know of something else by him?
The Valencia Ring by La Fura dels Baus has beautiful staging (but with ugly costumes and questionable musical values)
Andrei Serban, famous as a director of spoken theatre, has had some strong forays into opera as well. His Les Indes Galantes is a favorite here, but he's also done a lively L'Italiana in Algeri and a fascinating recasting of Werther as a Douglas Sirk-style 1950's Hollywood melodrama.
Nicholas Hytner is responsible for probably the best Cosi fan Tutte available, a sprightly Cunning Little Vixen, and a mixed-reviewed staging of Don Carlo that appears in both the Royal Opera House DVD and the Met HD broadcast.
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle always brought a stylized, Baroque sensibility to his work. He was probably best known for his series of Monteverdi and Mozart films.
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