From Kasarova to Lehtipuu via Other People's Blogs

Today, for some reason (probably because I saw the CD on the shelf), I decided to listen to Vesselina Kasarova's Lieder recital from 1999. Then I decided to see if I had ever gotten around to ripping it to iTunes. 

Aha! There it is in iTunes, but there's no cover photo (iTunes is not great at tracking down classical album covers.) So, of course, I Google images for "Kasarova Lieder."

The first image was the CD cover (now duly saved and linked to the files in iTunes). The fourth image linked me to a blog post by Smorgy called Why I Love Vesselina Kasarova. That Smorgy loves Kasarova is not news, but why Smorgy loves Kasarova was a new story for me. And it's a wonderful story. Her post also touches on indiscriminate "music criticism" that has little to do music or with actual criticism.

Die Entführung aus dem Serail – Bayerischer Staatsoper, Munich, 1980 (Part 2: It Must Never Excite Disgust)

(This is actually the quartet at the end of Act 3)

I’d forgotten how much beautiful music there is in this opera. My current favorite is the quartet at the end of Act 2. The nobles and servants each get slightly different styles of music, although when the men beg forgiveness, Pedrillo takes his cues from Belmonte, and echos his entreaties. This scene could be the basis for a whole opera, and the conflict is over pretty fast. But I don’t thing Mozart meant us to take this story very seriously.

Die Entführung aus dem Serail – Bayerischer Staatsoper, Munich, 1980 (Part 1: Time to Get Down On Your Knees!)

The booklet with this DVD of Die Entführung aus dem Serail contains liner notes from 1980 that defend the idea of opera on film. Nowadays, we take it for granted—film or video being medium through which most of us get to experience more “live” opera than we otherwise would. I appreciated the 1980s camera work, which captured the live experience well. I noticed when fast-forwarding that there are not a lot of edits, or different camera angles. The camera lingers so that you really do get a sense of watching a staged production.

What Did Entführung Ever Do To You?

Reri Grist as Blonde - 1980

My readers know I am a fan of reworking the classics. Many new angles and insights are revealed when we rethink tradition.  Sometimes these Regie-rethinkings are crap; sometimes they tell us something vaguely interesting, and sometimes they can be real eye-openers.  No opera is immune to a regie approach, but some get much more attention than others.

Lately, I've been pondering why Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail gets the regie treatment so often. More importantly, why do directors feel free to add and/or delete spoken text willy nilly?