Regietheater in Transition: An Introduction to Barbara Beyer's "Interviews with Contemporary Opera Directors"

Abstract

The following “Notes from the Stage” article is a translation of extracts from interviews with some of the most influential opera directors currently working in German-speaking countries. The interviews were conducted and published in 2005 by Barbara Beyer, in a book with the provocative title Warum Oper? (“Why Opera?”). A musicologist by training, Beyer is intimately acquainted with the world of operatic production, both as a dramaturg (at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, 1990–95) and as a director (at several opera houses, including Basel, Bonn, and Hannover). She also taught opera directing at the Universitat der Kunste and the Musikhochschule Hanns Eisler in Berlin for several years before being appointed, in 2009, as professor of music theater and scenic interpretation at the Kunstuniversitat Graz. Warum Oper? appeared at a time when the so-called Regietheater (often translated as “director’s theater”) had become virtually ubiquitous on German-language stages and had also begun to garner increasing interest elsewhere (if sometimes under the derogatory nickname “Eurotrash”). Amid this proliferation of Regietheater in opera, Beyer became interested in questioning some of its basic premises. In the book, she wonders, for instance, why the same old operas are being produced over and over again and whether new approaches could still be developed for this museum-like repertoire. In particular, she addresses the status of the operatic “material” (what David J. Levin has termed the “opera text,” that is, above all, the libretto and score) and its treatment on contemporary stages. Since this treatment appears to veer between interpretation and deconstruction, she also raises questions regarding the authorship of stage productions. Despite its (now) international presence, the phenomenon of Regietheater has remained notoriously difficult to define and demarcate, even for German critics. Although it can be traced back to the rise of independent Regie, or direction, in German theaters in the nineteenth century—as well as to avant-garde trends on early twentieth-century stages and to the clean-swept (entrumpelt) abstraction of the so-called “New Bayreuth” during the early postwar years—there is a widespread tendency to date its beginnings to the 1970s. Thus, Regietheater is often associated with the growing presence of film and theater directors working on