Lucy over at Opera Obsession has started a very interesting discussion based on a series of German language interviews with opera directors that appeared in book form as Warum Oper? Gespräche mit Opernregisseuren (Why Opera?  Conversations with Opera Directors).  Some extracts were translated into English and published in The Opera Quarterly Vol 27 so should be available to anyone with JSTOR access.

What’s interesting about the interviews (or at least what I could read in the English extracts) is how far they go beyond the never ending, and ultimately sterile, debate about traditional versus $descriptor_for_non_traditional productions.  All the directors take it as read that if one is going to restage a limited list of canonical operas over and over again then they must be reinterpreted.  Anything less is something less than art.  They differ in the degree to which the original product should be “respected”.  Most believe that any production must be closely rooted in the score though the most radical (for example Sebastian Baumgartner) argue that the canon should be treated more as a collective mine from which fragments can be extracted and recombined.  I’m pretty sure I would not go that far but after reading some of the other contributions I find myself reevaluating how I think about rearrangement and interpolation at least.  It’s certainly a stimulating read and I wish it were easier to have this kind of serious engagement with the interpretive and creative process in North America.