Regietheater. Intellectual terror through compelling prescription. The dictatorship of the director has turned the opera world into an ideological and aesthetic battlefield, in which the score and the creator’s original intent have been systematically sacrificed on the altar of the director’s narcissism for decades. What began in 1951 as an almost clinical aesthetic intervention by Wieland Wagner -who sought to “purify” the Bayreuth Festival with his minimalist and stripped-down productions and free it from its burdened traditions-degenerated in the 1970s into a destructive artistic totalitarianism: the unadulterated and radical Regietheater.
Tag: Dutch National Opera
I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Yaritza Véliz was a revelation for us in the role of Julia. Brilliant, beautiful, and magnificent. This Chilean soprano possesses all the vocal assets and technical skills required for bel canto: purity of tone, excellent breath control and a feel for melodic lines, clarity and precision in the vocalises, a comfortable range and, above all, a flexibility that enables her to convey emotions simply by varying her tone, dynamics or use of voice, with floating, ethereal high notes worthy of the greatest singers.
DNO “Toxic ideology on art”. “Her first major solo decision was to cancel an already booked new performance of Verdi’s Otello because of ‘the progressive understanding that an all-white team, including the performer of Otello, is problematic. This no longer felt right with the current changes in our society … Otello in a contemporary form can only be done in a team of color.’ (…) So a white tenor, in her opinion, cannot play the role of a general from North Africa who becomes jealous of his wife.”
Katie Mitchell. But now to the other celebration. Katie Mitchell is quitting opera directing. No more operas will be judged according to strict feminist standards. The misogyny of Mozart, Donizetti and Handel will have to be tackled by other misguided souls, and Mitchell herself now has plenty of time to work on the long-awaited maintenance of her sense of insignificance and the healing of her narrowed “Weltanschauung.
Opera is not a museum !
"shit on the sleeve" The Dutch National Opera's range of thoughts is spreading across Europe!…