[Dixielandjazz] The importance of Visual Impact on the music.

[Stephen G Barbone]

Of course, Opera is very visual compared to OKOM, however the below  
snip from a NY Times review indicates what happens to a "classic"  
audience when the visual is not what they expected. Same can be true  
of music performances, though perhaps not as vehement.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

September 23, 2009 - NY TIMES - By Anthony Tommasini

An Opera Staple Takes a Stark Turn at the Met


As the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, Peter Gelb has been  
on a campaign to make the house a place for theatrically daring  
productions with dramatically compelling casts. If this means shaking  
things up and riling segments of the audience, so be it. There are new  
audiences to court, as Mr. Gelb has often argued.

But right now he may be thinking, “Be careful what you wish for.” The  
Met opened its season on Monday night with a new production of  
Puccini’s “Tosca” by the adventurous Swiss-born director Luc Bondy.  
When Mr. Bondy and the production team appeared on stage during  
curtain calls, the audience erupted in boos. If there were cheers  
among the jeers, they were drowned out.

The conductor James Levine and the cast, headed by the charismatic  
soprano Karita Mattila in the title role and the impassioned tenor  
Marcelo Álvarez as her lover Mario Cavaradossi, all received enormous  
ovations.

True, the reaction of an audience to a new production, especially when  
the opera is a staple of the repertory, is only one indicator of a  
production’s impact.

Still, the booing, if a little unfair, was understandable. Mr. Bondy’s  
high-concept staging featured stark, spare, cold sets and dispensed  
entirely with many of the familiar theatrical touches that audiences  
count on in this repertory staple: Tosca placed no candles by the body  
of the villain Scarpia after murdering him, and she did not exactly  
leap to her death at the end. Mr. Bondy had scoured the work, it  
seemed, looking for every pretense to flesh out, literally, the  
eroticism of the lovers and the lecherous kinkiness of Scarpia.

Remainder snipped for brevity.