If it’s Baroque… Opera Productions, Any staging of an older opera involves building a bridge Old and New between the past and the present. You start with a score; its music is your Bible. But no score earlier than about 1850 will tell you what to do on the stage. So the first task is to imagine what the composer himself would have seen. Do you simply reproduce that? Time has passed, and much has changed: musical understanding, theater technology, the availability of 1. singers, the expectations of the audience, and our political and moral perspectives. The act of staging implies a history of the If it’s lapsed time between a composer’s period and our own.

Baroque… A. Alternative Versions

Three takes on scene from the earliest opera still in the repertoire (1607), the Orfeo of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). We shall watch a production by Gilbert Deflo that aims at authenticity, one by Trisha Brown that treats it as dance, and another by Barrie Kosky that fills the stage in a wild extravaganza. This last employs an arrangement and orchestration by Elena Cats-Chernin. — Monteverdi: Orfeo, “Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi” 2½ Furio Zanasi (Barcelona, 2002; d. Gilbert Deflo) — Monteverdi: Orfeo, “Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi” 2½ Simon Keenlyside (Brooklyn, 1998; d. Trisha Brown) — Monteverdi: Orfeo, “Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi” 2½ Dominik Köninger (Berlin, 2012; d. Barrie Kosky)

B. Romp or Reality: Rameau

We shall compare two Paris productions of Les Indes Galantes (1735) by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) an opéra-ballet (Broadway comes to Versailles) on a colonial theme. When we revive such a work, how much do we keep the production“ in quotes,” as it were, and how much should we be attuned to contemporary sensibilities?

Handel: — Rameau: Les Indes galantes, dance from the “Savages” 4 — Handel: , “Da tempeste” (first part) 2½ Paris, 1999; d. Andrei Serban; choreography Bintou Dembélé. Inger Dam-Jensen (Copenhagen, 2005; d. ) — Rameau: Les Indes galantes, dance from the “Savages” 4 — Handel: Giulio Cesare, “Da tempeste” (first part) 2½ Paris, 2019; d. Clément Cogitore; choreography Bintou Dembélé. Danielle De Niese (Glyndebourne, 2006; d. David McVicar) And with Morgana’s opening aria from Alcina (1735), we may C. Basic Concepts, Mostly Baroque address the problem of portraying seduction onstage, especially when this has overtones of enslavement rather than love. And also How do the conductor and stage director divide responsibilities in admire, in the hands of director Katie Mitchell, a brilliant response the opera house? With what principles may we approach the staging to the ornamentation of the da capo. of a work from a distant century? What did the earliest theaters (such as the one still surviving at Cesky Krumlov) look like? — Handel: Alcina, “O s’apre al riso” (first part) 2 Catriona Smith (Stuttgart, 2000; d. Jossi Wieler) Baroque opera in the Italian tradition settled in to a closely defined form, opera seria. We shall look at what this involves, how its drama — Handel: Alcina, “O s’apre al riso” (complete) 5 Anna Prohaska (Aix-en-Provence, 2015; d. Katie Mitchell) worked, and what it demands of its singers—especially castrati such as Senesino and Farinelli, who were the superstars of their day. A movie about the latter enables us to imagine (and, with modern E. Making Devotion Personal technology, to hear) what their performances might have been like. Finally, an oddity: a staging of Handel’s by the director — Riccardo Broschi: Idaspe, “Ombra fedele anch’io” 4½ Claus Guth. It is more than a vanity project or stylistic exercise. By From the film Farinelli, il castrato, by Gérard Corbiau (1994) allowing the element of doubt to enter this proclamation of faith, Guth brings his singers into our own questioning time, and makes us D. Handel with Care — or with Abandon hear the words as if for the first time, not merely as Holy Writ. — Handel: The Messiah, “Comfort ye. my people” 4½ Three arias from the operas of (1685–1759), Richard Croft (Vienna, 2012; d. Claus Guth) the dominant opera composer of his time. Each will be heard in two — Handel: The Messiah, “He shall feed His flock” 7½ different performance. In the case of an aria from Orlando (1733), Bejun Mehta, Cornelia Horak (Vienna, 2012; d. Claus Guth) we can explore the difference between a staged and unstaged version, and also demonstrate the practice of adding improvised ornaments to the da capo repeat of the opening section, which was almost de rigueur in Italian opera seria. — Handel: Orlando, “Fammi combattere” 3½ Bejun Mehta in concert with René Jacobs — Handel: Orlando, “Fammi combattere” 4 Bejun Mehta (Brussels, 2011; d. Pierre Audi) After each class, relevant materials will be posted at: Cleopatra’s last aria in Giulio Cesare (1724) will show some of the choices a director may make in visual style, in emotional tone, and http://www.brunyate.com/OpProdColumbia/ the imagined partner to whom the character sings. The instructor may be contacted at [email protected]