[Dixielandjazz] How "Art" Changes

[Steve barbone]

Not OKOM & Snipped for content. If anyone wants the entire article, write me
off list. Funny to say, this production is directed by a Peter Sellars, and
will also appear in NYC later on, as well as in Disneyland in California.

Musical content: "There'll Be Some Changes Made"

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


APRIL 14, 2005 - NY TIMES - By ALAN RIDING

In Pursuit of Total Art, Paris Opera Adds Video to 'Tristan und Isolde'
 

PARIS, April 13 - Huge, dense, taxing, with almost all the action taking
place in the heart, Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" is notoriously difficult
to stage. Indeed, the composer himself abandoned his first attempt in Vienna
in the early 1860's after no fewer than 77 rehearsals. Now, in a daring
experiment, the Paris National Opera has invited the American video artist
Bill Viola to accompany the work with his own visual commentary.

On a 30-foot-wide screen above and behind the somberly lighted space peopled
by the singers, images that recall some of Mr. Viola's well-known video
pieces variously offer literal, metaphorical and even spiritual complements
to one of mythology's most famous and tragic love stories. With only the
preludes played to a closed curtain, Mr. Viola's multi-toned video poem runs
for some 3 hours 40 minutes, a full-length spectacle in its own right. . . .
. (snipped here) . . . to last paragraph below.

Still, with the combination of video, orchestra, singing, acting and text,
Mr. Sellars likes to think the team has come up with something resembling a
modern Gesamtkunstwerk, the concept of total art that was Wagner's lifelong
musical and theatrical objective. "Of course," he added, "Wagner's music
alone gives you more than you can possibly take in."