Post by darkehmen on Feb 6, 2008 22:14:48 GMT 1
Thinking about the Das Rheingold film, I found an interesting comment about it on DG's Karajan centenary site:
That throwaway comment is actually highly significant, because it explains why Karajan's approach to opera staging generally -- and to Wagner specifically -- has, in the present day-and age, paradoxically become...cutting edge.
What do I mean by that? Well, consider the tone of the quoted comment. The heroic approach to Wagner now seems almost inconceivably different, like it comes from somewhere outside the postmodern world (which it does). It is utterly at odds with the typical modern performance. And those modern performances have become very typical indeed. It is no longer a questions of whether a director will savage a Wagner opera; it's simply a matter of how far he'll go to exhibit his contempt of the work and of its values. The only question today is: Just how many Third Reich associations will he make...just how much will he "shock" and "offend" the audience of wealthy concert-goers (whom he resents)...just how "outrageous" will he be, hoping to make a name for himself. Again and again, it's the same thing -- turning Romanticism on its head, digging up Wagner and his world to kill him once more, spray-painting more modern graffiti on the works of a better age than our own. It's become opera-staging-by-numbers.
In other words, the kind of performances that were once considered "avant-garde" and "cutting edge" have now become standard and routine; nearly interchangeable, in fact, except for the details of the obscenity, and the degrees of violation.
Modernism is the new mainstream. The status quo.
And if the modernist approach is commonplace, then Karajan's approach (i.e, fidelity to Wagner, and a heroic interpretation) has in fact become . . . the true avant-garde, the genuine cutting edge. Moreover, it is the only approach that actually offends establishment sensibilities (as cutting-edge works are supposed to do), for today, modernist dogma is the establishment.
In an age of postmodernism, nothing is more outré than traditionalism. In an anti-heroic age, nothing is more avant-garde than heroism. Karajan's approach infuriates the cultural arbiters of the time -- of our time -- as radical artists have always done. And if being provocative is part of what makes an interpretation great (as today's modern-leaning critics have always maintained), then Karajan, in his unapologetic traditionalism, in his uninhibited Romanticism, is the supreme agent provocateur, the greatest enfant terrible of all, the only one who is actually challenging norms, causing unrest and dispute.
Karajan's staging is in the epic style of another age, emphasizing the dignity of the gods rather than their all too human failings.
That throwaway comment is actually highly significant, because it explains why Karajan's approach to opera staging generally -- and to Wagner specifically -- has, in the present day-and age, paradoxically become...cutting edge.
What do I mean by that? Well, consider the tone of the quoted comment. The heroic approach to Wagner now seems almost inconceivably different, like it comes from somewhere outside the postmodern world (which it does). It is utterly at odds with the typical modern performance. And those modern performances have become very typical indeed. It is no longer a questions of whether a director will savage a Wagner opera; it's simply a matter of how far he'll go to exhibit his contempt of the work and of its values. The only question today is: Just how many Third Reich associations will he make...just how much will he "shock" and "offend" the audience of wealthy concert-goers (whom he resents)...just how "outrageous" will he be, hoping to make a name for himself. Again and again, it's the same thing -- turning Romanticism on its head, digging up Wagner and his world to kill him once more, spray-painting more modern graffiti on the works of a better age than our own. It's become opera-staging-by-numbers.
In other words, the kind of performances that were once considered "avant-garde" and "cutting edge" have now become standard and routine; nearly interchangeable, in fact, except for the details of the obscenity, and the degrees of violation.
Modernism is the new mainstream. The status quo.
And if the modernist approach is commonplace, then Karajan's approach (i.e, fidelity to Wagner, and a heroic interpretation) has in fact become . . . the true avant-garde, the genuine cutting edge. Moreover, it is the only approach that actually offends establishment sensibilities (as cutting-edge works are supposed to do), for today, modernist dogma is the establishment.
In an age of postmodernism, nothing is more outré than traditionalism. In an anti-heroic age, nothing is more avant-garde than heroism. Karajan's approach infuriates the cultural arbiters of the time -- of our time -- as radical artists have always done. And if being provocative is part of what makes an interpretation great (as today's modern-leaning critics have always maintained), then Karajan, in his unapologetic traditionalism, in his uninhibited Romanticism, is the supreme agent provocateur, the greatest enfant terrible of all, the only one who is actually challenging norms, causing unrest and dispute.
