Metareference in Operatic Performance: The Case of Katharina Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg [2011]

Although the papers collected in this volume cover an impressively wide range of areas where the contemporary cultural scene shows evidence of metarefer- ential elements, it is interesting to note that few, if any, concern themselves with the world of the musical theatre. This is quite surprising as, indeed, opera houses are nowadays – particularly in Europe – the romping place of theatrical ex- perimentation where even stage directors who have their background in play- houses for spoken drama are increasingly attracted by the musical theatre and take up the challenge of producing operas. One may wonder why this is the case as, after all, operas are generally far more restrictive than plays, by their rigid time scheme and by the emotional and theatrical/gestural implications of the musical score. Yet these very constraints may indeed form a most welcome incentive for more adventurous stage directors, and it is a widely observed fact that nowadays opera is the dearly loved playground of innovative theatre, and that what we have learned to call ‘Regietheater’ (‘directors’ theatre’) has found its most controversial expression in opera productions1. Innovative stage direc- tors who align themselves with the trend of ‘Regietheater’ see it as their task to take an independent stand vis-à-vis the work they are faced with and are concerned about an individual reading of the work which – if seen in a posi- tive light – reveals aspects of the work that are of particular relevance in a con- temporary context. If seen in a negative light, such an ‘individual reading’ may very well form a more or less wilful projection of the director’s own obsessions onto the work at hand. A helpful and illuminating survey of a great number

1 The term is misleading as ‘Regie’ (stage direction) is a natural part of any theatrical activity. It is the implication of the term ‘Regietheater’ that in this theatrical practice the director assumes a position superior to that of the author or any other function in the production process. So it is little surprising that the advent of so-called ‘Regietheater’ roughly coincided with “The Death of the Author” as proclaimed by Roland Barthes (see 1967). Conversely, there are indications that by now the heyday of ‘Regietheater’ seems to be over. 448 Metareference in Operatic Performance: Katharina Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

of aspects which a devoted up-to-date stage director may have in mind when setting out to put a work on stage can be found in Anja Oeck’s study of Peter Konwitschny, Musiktheater als Chance (2008). Konwitschny, who was elect- ed ‘Stage Director of the Year’ five times by the prestigious journal, Opern- welt, is a central figure in today’s world of opera, and the survey of strategies and principles guiding his directing activities, as given by Oeck, offers welcome insight into practices and motivations of present-day theatrical work. Those of interest in the context of discussions about metareference can be found in the book’s chapter titled “Allzu Vertrautes verfremden”2. It discusses such top- ics as “Annähern und Distanzieren”3; or ‘Epic Theatre on the Opera Stage’; ‘The Inclusion of Extraneous Material’; ‘Premature Endings’; ‘Stepping Out of Character’; ‘Change of Time and Place’; ‘Discontinuous Narratives’; ‘Breaking Down the Fourth Wall’; ‘Surprise Castings’; ‘New and Unexpected Contexts’; etc. Most of these strategies naturally serve a self-referential function and draw audience attention to the fact that – in metareferential terms – this is theatre and that the director is manipulating theatrical devices.

Such meta-theatrical references can take the simple form of putting a thea- tre on the stage, as, for instance, in the 2008 Austrian production at St. Marga- rethen of La Traviata, where the stage setting was the inside of the Paris Opera House – a case of mere ‘pointing to’, in Werner Wolf’s terms (cf. 2009: 17), where this reference to opera serves as a mere backdrop and remains otherwise unexploited, so no metareferential meaning production or reflective activity in the audience is encouraged by the fact. Similarly, to pick up another chance ex- ample, in Andreas Homoki’s 1998 Berlin production of Poulenc’s The Love for Three Oranges, written signs were shown on the stage at certain intervals, say- ing “Tragödie”, “Komödie”, or “Lyrisches Drama”, which referred to the score’s genre attributions of the respective scenes in the opera. This is a more interest- ing case as such a form of performative metareference visualizes an important structural element of the opera itself discussed in its prologue, namely, the play- ful mixture of dramatic genres in the work (reminiscent of the similar practice in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos). So here a metareferential element of the work itself is made explicit in the performance by an additional metaref-

2 ‘To Alienate What Has Become Too Familiar’. 3 ‘Moving Closer and Moving Further Away’, a practice reminiscent of strategies effecting aesthetic illusion.