| This study is a critique of Peter Sellars's productions of the three Mozart/da Ponte operas---Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte---originally staged at Purchase, New York in 1988 and 1989. Peter Sellars's productions represent an attempt to expand the expressive horizon of opera through contact with recent developments in spoken theater and other dramatic genres. Especially, his innovative opera productions reflect his view of opera as a tool to express our contemporary society and ideas. In order to understand the complexity of his narrative, in which various theatrical traditions and devices are mixed together, this study analyzes the complicated web of integrities and disparities between action, music, and text.;Two binary concepts provide the framework for this analysis: realistic/non-realistic, and serious/comic. These binaries, however, should rather be thought of as a continuum in which the serious and the comic, the realistic and the non-realistic merge into one another. Sellars's unorthodox combinations of all these binaries lead to the simultaneity of psychological truthfulness and freedom of expression. This simultaneity has various origins in previous dramatic concepts, including Stanislavsky's realistic notion of emotional identification, the Brechtian concept of defamiliarization, and the Meyerholdian concept of anti-realism. Sellars mixes various concepts eclectically to reflect his vision of our contemporary world, which reveals the points of disjuncture in it. His deconstructive puzzles force spectators to reconsider both the operas and themselves. Sellars chooses opera as his preferred medium, a medium that allows him to transcend traditional conventions. Disregarding the notions of unity of vision and authorial intent, Sellars develops his own individual view that embraces simultaneous, multiple interpretations. However, Sellars seems to propose answers rather than ask questions. Sellars's voice in these productions is thus more prominent than Mozart's or da Ponte's. |
