Как это делается в Лондоне
К недавней премьере "Детей Розенталя": декаданс в оперной труппе English National Opera. Брюнхильда с поясом шахида, нагота, секс и порнография, в проекте - Муаммар Каддафи на музыку Asian Dub Foundation
Wagner ends with a bang in new production on London stage
Theatre critics not impressed as Bruennhilde straps explosives to her body and sacrifices herself
MICHAEL MCDONOUGH
AP
April 9, 2005
A female suicide bomber appears on a London stage and blows herself up along with the cast.
The finale to the English National Opera's production of Richard Wagner's Twilight of the Gods is just the latest in a series of shock tactics by the company that brought pole dancing, gang rape and multiple stabbing to the sometimes staid world of opera.
But the scene failed to impress critics long used to the company's radical productions.
"Utterly crass" is how the Guardian described the scene in which Wagner's heroine Bruennhilde straps explosives to her body and sacrifices herself.
"It's an intellectually lazy way to end, and the cheapest of tricks."
Director Phyllida Lloyd, who directed the hit musical Mamma Mia! before turning her hand to the whole of Wagner's Ring cycle, was unrepentant about her staging of the opera, often referred to by its German title Goetterdaemmerung.
"It's hard to be more sensational than Wagner," she told the Observer newspaper. "This is already one of the most sensational pieces of theatre ever conceived."
"There is something inevitable about the bombing because there are so many terrible things that take place in the story," she said.
In traditional stagings of the opera, Bruennhilde rides a horse into the burning funeral pyre erected for her dead lover Siegfried. But Lloyd said she wanted to make the finale more realistic.
"She is helped into the jacket by her sister, who then hands her a detonator," she told the Observer. "Bruennhilde destroys everything that is poisonous.
"We are seeing a world that has gone to hell."
The scene had echoes of the 2002 theatre siege in Moscow, in which female hostage takers strapped themselves with explosives.
In that tragedy, 129 hostages and 41 Chechen militants died, mostly from narcotic gas pumped in by Russian special forces.
Lloyd, who was unavailable for comment Tuesday morning, didn't refer to the Moscow siege in her Observer interview.
London's more established Royal Opera House is currently putting on its own version of the Ring cycle, but critics have given it even more lacklustre reviews than the ENO staging.
"Phyllida Lloyd's production of Wagner's Ring ... hasn't so far been to everyone's taste," wrote the Telegraph.
"But in comparison to Keith Warner and Stefanos Lazaridis' messy and gimmicky effort at the Royal Opera, it looks intelligent, forceful and purposeful."
Lloyd's Ring - which also features pole-dancing Rhinemaidens, a Las Vegas-style wedding and vassals dressed up as members of a riot squad - is certain to fuel the English National Opera's reputation for courting controversy.
Three years ago, Spanish director Calixto Bieito's production of Verdi's A Masked Ball was panned by critics for its nudity, simulated gang rape and cross-dressing.
Tenor Julian Gavin withdrew from the lead role before rehearsals started because of the staging.
Bieito's 2001 production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the ENO - whose productions are always sung in English - was booed on opening night.
In that staging, Don Giovanni had sex in the back of a car and behind a bar.
Instead of being dragged down to hell in the closing scene, he was stabbed to death by the characters whose lives he defiled.
The ENO, based at the Coliseum theatre off Trafalgar Square, recently commissioned hip-hop dance collective Asian Dub Foundation to create an opera about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for production in February 2006.
The work will focus on the idiosyncratic Libyan leader's journey from pariah to statesman, with a rapper playing Gadhafi and the chorus portraying his all-female cohort of bodyguards.
Although the suicide bombing scene in Twilight of the Gods received an unenthusiastic response from critics, some congratulated the ENO for attempting to innovate.
"I'd rather be infuriated, which I was constantly, than bored," wrote the Evening Standard's reviewer, Fiona Maddocks. "With Wagner, as long as the audience can engage, something's going right."
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005
Wagner ends with a bang in new production on London stage
Theatre critics not impressed as Bruennhilde straps explosives to her body and sacrifices herself
MICHAEL MCDONOUGH
AP
April 9, 2005
A female suicide bomber appears on a London stage and blows herself up along with the cast.
The finale to the English National Opera's production of Richard Wagner's Twilight of the Gods is just the latest in a series of shock tactics by the company that brought pole dancing, gang rape and multiple stabbing to the sometimes staid world of opera.
But the scene failed to impress critics long used to the company's radical productions.
"Utterly crass" is how the Guardian described the scene in which Wagner's heroine Bruennhilde straps explosives to her body and sacrifices herself.
"It's an intellectually lazy way to end, and the cheapest of tricks."
Director Phyllida Lloyd, who directed the hit musical Mamma Mia! before turning her hand to the whole of Wagner's Ring cycle, was unrepentant about her staging of the opera, often referred to by its German title Goetterdaemmerung.
"It's hard to be more sensational than Wagner," she told the Observer newspaper. "This is already one of the most sensational pieces of theatre ever conceived."
"There is something inevitable about the bombing because there are so many terrible things that take place in the story," she said.
In traditional stagings of the opera, Bruennhilde rides a horse into the burning funeral pyre erected for her dead lover Siegfried. But Lloyd said she wanted to make the finale more realistic.
"She is helped into the jacket by her sister, who then hands her a detonator," she told the Observer. "Bruennhilde destroys everything that is poisonous.
"We are seeing a world that has gone to hell."
The scene had echoes of the 2002 theatre siege in Moscow, in which female hostage takers strapped themselves with explosives.
In that tragedy, 129 hostages and 41 Chechen militants died, mostly from narcotic gas pumped in by Russian special forces.
Lloyd, who was unavailable for comment Tuesday morning, didn't refer to the Moscow siege in her Observer interview.
London's more established Royal Opera House is currently putting on its own version of the Ring cycle, but critics have given it even more lacklustre reviews than the ENO staging.
"Phyllida Lloyd's production of Wagner's Ring ... hasn't so far been to everyone's taste," wrote the Telegraph.
"But in comparison to Keith Warner and Stefanos Lazaridis' messy and gimmicky effort at the Royal Opera, it looks intelligent, forceful and purposeful."
Lloyd's Ring - which also features pole-dancing Rhinemaidens, a Las Vegas-style wedding and vassals dressed up as members of a riot squad - is certain to fuel the English National Opera's reputation for courting controversy.
Three years ago, Spanish director Calixto Bieito's production of Verdi's A Masked Ball was panned by critics for its nudity, simulated gang rape and cross-dressing.
Tenor Julian Gavin withdrew from the lead role before rehearsals started because of the staging.
Bieito's 2001 production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the ENO - whose productions are always sung in English - was booed on opening night.
In that staging, Don Giovanni had sex in the back of a car and behind a bar.
Instead of being dragged down to hell in the closing scene, he was stabbed to death by the characters whose lives he defiled.
The ENO, based at the Coliseum theatre off Trafalgar Square, recently commissioned hip-hop dance collective Asian Dub Foundation to create an opera about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for production in February 2006.
The work will focus on the idiosyncratic Libyan leader's journey from pariah to statesman, with a rapper playing Gadhafi and the chorus portraying his all-female cohort of bodyguards.
Although the suicide bombing scene in Twilight of the Gods received an unenthusiastic response from critics, some congratulated the ENO for attempting to innovate.
"I'd rather be infuriated, which I was constantly, than bored," wrote the Evening Standard's reviewer, Fiona Maddocks. "With Wagner, as long as the audience can engage, something's going right."
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005