An Afternoon at the Opera

Iv’e just watched a production by the Canadian Opera Company of “ Leporello’s Don Giovanni “, an innovative, exciting production which consists of all the scenes from “ Don Giovanni “ in which Leporello participates or which he witnesses. The same (very sexy ) singer appears as both Leporello and the Don , sometimes singing in duet with himself ( the Don is the subject of a black and white film being shown by Leporello).The women watching Leporello’s film all looked rather like the Duchess of Windsor, and the staging of the filmed performances was very clever.It was the best filmed production of an opera I’ve seen since the San Francisco Opera’s “Mefistofile’ and a very high-tech version of “The Damnation of Faust” by (I think) a German company whose name escapes me. There is also a very funny “Ring Cycle” showing on the tube at the moment, one act at a time. Wotan is a bikie, Seigfreid is a hash-smoking yahoo slob, Mime seems to be the proprietor of a greasy spoon café/ garage. I can’t wait to see what they make of Fafner the dragon. Except maybe for “Tristan and Isolde”, I think the only way Wagner can still be presented is as satire, as in the famous Boulez/ Chereau production. The man, his philosophy and his stage history are too repulsive to be presented without directorial comment for a modern audience unless they happen to be Germans in the 70+ age bracket.The Australian Opera, a few years ago had the good fortune to acquire the services of the wonderful Simone Young, who brought us productions of difficult , challenging works such as “ The Lady Macbeth of Mtensk” by Schostokovitch and “ Lulu “ by Berg. She lifted orchestral standards by enormous leaps. She. of course, had to go. “ Too expensive a vision, too challenging, too....well it’s not what we’re used to! “ So its back to Butterfly, Boheme, Traviata and Mikado for us thank you very much, and the blue-rinse set is able to re-affirms its cultural dominance, the corporate sector is comforted and we can all slip back into our semi-comas. We may have a great building, but Canada is miles ahead in spirit and adventurousness.Australian artistic boards chew up and spit out talented people, The treatment that was meted out to the great Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard and to the American genius director Peter Sellars are two recent embarrassing examples.Having priced themselves out of the reach of “just folks”, most tickets for opera and ballet are snapped up in blocks by corporate types with little appreciation for the arts but a great appreciation for being seen in all the right places. How do I know they have little appreciation for the arts? They behave like they’e at home watching”Big Brother”.Anyway, congratulations to the Canadians on a fabulous production.