As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Opera is one of the most important art forms. It should be listened to and appreciated by everyone.
It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.
What I've discovered and really confirmed to myself is that opera really likes loud colours, and you need something bold, something savage, unpredictable, passionate. You can't really run a two-hour opera round some muted murmuring.
Now the big question is if you are going to go to all the trouble of setting an opera and making all that music and so on, there's got to be some aspect that you can do in an opera that really makes it worth while.
I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.
But nevertheless, it's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world.
In opera, everyone's watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn't relate too much to film.
I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on.
Opera is a beautiful and important diversion for me.
I don't find much influence in opera. It was such a different part of me.