Merely A Semantic Distinction?
[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:20 PM Eastern on 2 May. See below.]
On one of the opera forums we monitor and on which we occasionally post, there's a small discussion taking place about Peter Sellars's staging of Bach's Cantata No. 82 in which staging the "action" is set in the terminal ward of a hospital. In response to the typical sort of negative opinion expressed such as this one:
As for Sellars putting Bach in the hospital, as it were ... I personally prefer my Bach cantatas without life support, thank you very much. I have no doubt that Sellars wanted to bring new light to the piece. I'm just not sure his light was the right kind,
one member shot back:
[Y]ou [don't] remotely get it. I believe you are imprisoned by taste and completely miss, among other things, the significance of such a production to the artists themselves, which the audience is allowed to watch and maybe comprehend (if they give up the routines that supposedly guarantee routine emotional tranquility and safety). What do you think was going on with [mezzo] Lorraine [Hunt Lieberson] that she agreed to [sing in] the production? Do you think she had the time or inclination to do anything she considered "unnecessary"? For such an artist Bach's meaning and her interface with it is far more complex than the proper bourgeois would wish to tolerate.
Yes, well, the truth of the matter is that "Bach's meaning" was not a real consideration for Sellars, nor was it his intention "to bring new light to the piece." Like all of the Regie crowd, Peter Sellars never wants to bring new light to the piece. What Peter Sellars wants is to use the piece to make his Konzept inspired by the piece more powerfully evocative. With Sellars and the rest of that crowd it's never about the piece. It's about the Konzept — first, foremost, exclusively, and always.
There's nothing wrong with that, actually, were the work in this case billed along the lines of, say, "The Staging of a New Concept by Peter Sellars with music by J. S. Bach". Billed in that way, it seems to us a perfectly legitimate enterprise. But billed as, say, "J. S. Bach's Cantata No. 82, realized for the stage by Peter Sellars", or, worse, "J. S. Bach's Cantata No. 82", it's a clear fraud, and makes a mockery both of the cantata and of Bach.
Merely a semantic distinction we're making, you say?
Think again.
Update (1:20 PM Eastern on 2 May): We've received an eMail objection to our above remarks to the effect that Peter Sellars is never out to impose a concept on a piece of music that arose out of nothing, and that we made it sound as if Sellars thought, "terminal ward," then went around looking for music to fit. Further, our correspondent is keen to tell us that Sellars takes great care in how the music is presented, takes the score as seriously as he should, and is upset if a conductor doesn't respect the score.
First, we were most careful in what we wrote to NOT make it sound as if Sellars thought "terminal ward," then went around looking for music to fit. What we wrote was, "What Peter Sellars wants is to use the piece to make his Konzept inspired by the piece more powerfully evocative." After that concept is arrived at, he of course takes great care in how the music is presented, takes the score as seriously as he should, and is upset if a conductor doesn't respect the score. It would screw up his concept if the conductor didn't. Our point was, once the concept is arrived at, Sellars and his ilk are concerned about one thing and one thing only: the most effective realization of the concept, NOT the music and what the composer meant it to say, for at that point the music becomes mere servant to the concept, not the other way round.
We trust the above makes our position more clear.
