Vienna’s Tristan: Bare bottoms and kids on a swing
NewsFirst pictures have been released ahead of tomorrow night’s premiere of the Calixto Bieito production.
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the poor choristers, banal nudity is boring, and the average body is just not that interesting to look at
I’m not against nudity per se, but clothing was invented for a reason, to make the body more pleasing, otherwise your average well-fed middle class person is just sagging sacks of flesh and fat
I feel lucky and privileged to have attended Vienna’s Everding production of Tristan.
Boooooh
Every booooh one to less
Can’t wait to see this production by one of opera’s most challenging and stimulating directors on May 1st. His Lady McBeth of the Mstsensk District in Antwerp was the strongest theatrical performance I have ever seen on an opera stage, and his blasphemous Parsifal in Stuttgart is on of the most significant Parsifal productions of this young century.
(Memo to the haters: I see between 20 and 30 Wagner productions all over Europe each season. But by all means do comment if you know what you are talking about.)
I agree that his Parsifal was magnificent. However, I have seen too many uninspired productions of his which have become quite repetitive and predictable. His Lohengrin in Berlin was just plain dull.
Haters? If you have to demonise people who hold opinions you disagree with, you need to take a long hard look at yourself.
The obvious interpretation of this is that Tristan, Isolde and King Marke were swingers! As for the bare bottoms: looks like Act Two of Tristan has been transferred to one of Boris’ nighttime lockdown garden parties…
All been seen before at the opera
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/5-000-pose-nude-at-sydneys-opera-house-411781
Controversy is the art of the untalented.
“Excuse me, sir. I thought I bought a ticket to Tristan, but this seems to be a revival of Oh, Calcutta! May I have a refund?”
The biggest problem with Bieito is that he doesn’t appear to have matured at all in 30 years. I remember seeing my first production of his (can’t even remember what it was now – Ballo in Maschera maybe?) at the ENO, and found it rather thrilling and transgressive, as I think you’re allowed to when you’re in your mid 20s. But everything since has been more of the same, with ever diminishing returns. I’ve changed, he hasn’t. What’s next I wonder? HMS Pinafore where Josephine (and probably Ralph too) get raped by Dead-eyed dick? Das Land des Lächelns set in Srebrenica? It’s all just too tedious for words, and serious houses should simply stop hiring him until he comes back with some new ideas.
That’s a bit the problem with this whole generation of opera directors (Beito, Warlikowski, Tcherniakov,…): Some good ideas and convincing productions in the beginning, but then the same mannerisms are repeated all over again. This being said, I saw Beito’s production of Reimann’s King Lear in Paris a couple of years ago which was well crafted without shock effect, so luckily
there are exceptions.
Does anyone actually pay to see this tripe? Or do they pay you to sit through it?
Wonderful! Precisely as Wagner wanted it done, but was afraid to do.
Wagner always wanted to do Regietheater, he only never told anyone. In Cosima’s diary we read, on monday evening 3rd of August 1874: ‘R. came down from his checking the passage of the Rheinmädl, and said, over the port: ‘I would love to do Regietheater, but please don’t write that down and don’t tell anybody. They will do it much better in the next century.’
Eeeeeeeew.
Is it bad that I first read this as “Bare bottoms and skids on a swing”?
Bare bottoms are there for the moronic booers.
Oh, I see: they’re bare bottoms in the photograph! I thought it was a bicycle rack.
What Calixto Beito fears most is . . . being ignored.
Let’s face it: if this fraud had been called Horst Müller, people would have stopped hiring him decades ago.
Avante-gard sexiness. How nice.
Signor Bieito is a deeply disturbed man. His productions prove that he belongs in a sanatorium. Instead, he is employed by the top opera houses who can’t pay him enough to destroy the great operas.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Señor Bieito, I think. Please do not offend the Italians.
Please accept my deep and sincere apology
The nice thing about Bieito is that he sticks to what he knows: lavatories, S/M, and . . . I forget if there is a third one. Same thing with Tcherniakov: once, when he was young, he saw an ugly room with brown wallpapers that struck him as the epitome of bourgeois luxury — and he has been recreating it ever since, regardless of which opera he is staging.
I don’t think Tcherniakov ever got over the trauma of growing up, most likely, in a communal flat in the USSR. This is why he keeps producing operas that all take place in the drab Soviet era -looking surroundings. Pure PTSD. He is also of the opinion that nothing ever ends well, so he changes operatic stories to produce an alternate and always bad ending.
Now, can someone explain to me
Bartlett Sher’s obsession with long leather coats?
The opera designer rule: If you can’t think of anything else to do, remove the clothes from some extras or members of the chorus.
Why do singers agree to participate in such trash? Money, I suppose.
It’s their job, isn’t it? their opinion doesn’t interest anyone. And if they start to argue, they will get a label that they are “difficult” and no one will want to engage them.
Grim… :/
How ridiculous!