So here I am learning about ballet and opera and I am walking the dog and I think how does one actually DO an opera. It seems like there is at least a collaboration between the librettist and the composer, at least at the beginning then all the acting and staging and sets and so forth turn it into a production. That sounds daunting.

Since I can't do music the only opera I could do is a libretto. I mean any story could be the basis for an opera theoretically. It might not make an interesting opera, but heck a good story could be adapted.

Then it hit me... could a libretto be made about ballet.. And opera which has characters associated with ballet? Why not? Of course, imagining dancers singing or singers dancing seems to be the sticking point. But I didn't even get that far into a story... but I thought it could make an interesting theater experience.

Both opera and ballet have many tragic romantic stories, love stories. The Broadway Musical is like an opera with dance. Think of West Side Story which is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Why not a story about ballet dancers, choreographers, love, jealousy, tragedy, triumph... all those good things.

Is this totally nuts... or is it an idea waiting to happen?

The problem I see up front is the casting of ballet dancers who can sing on an operatic level. Neither talent lies thick on the ground and a combination package is like hen's teeth. In musical theater, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote Allegro in 1947, which had more dancing and dancers per page than ever before, until West Side Story came along. Patricia Barker (the one from the mid 1940s Ballet Theatre), and Melissa Hayden were dancers in that show, but I don't know exactly how much singing they did, if any.

Frankly, I'm not fond of the idea of "singing dancers" or "dancing singers" if for no other reason than the one Mel brings up. However, I like the idea of an opera lebretto than has a ballet company as its focus. As you say, there is lots of "love, jealousy, tragedy, triumph" there (no murder and death tho -- which is the bread and butter of most non-comedic opera).

You would not have to have "singing dancers" or "dancing singers", but rather could have ballet dancers in the operatic chorus (a mixed chorus of singers and dancers). A good director could probably pull that off. In the recent opera "Florencia" modern dancers were used to great effect to "simulate" a river both in calm and in storm (the entire opera takes place on a boat plying the Amazon).

I guess only trim opera singers could be cast however.

I don't expect to have singers dancing or dancers singing actually. For example it could be a tragic love story about an older choreographer (singer) who remembers in dance flash backs about the company (dancers).

Now I haven't thought this thing through because this is way out of my league, but it seems possible. The recent Madama Butterfly used a puppet for a child with puppeteers. And in the intermission I met a women who called herself a ballet dancer who had danced with the met opera. It just got me reflecting on the two.. which I see on that stage... opera and ballet.

The biggest problem I would think is the cost of commissioning and then of producing a new opera. I've heard it said by experts that one of the problems in today's opera world is that audiences are generally not receptive to new operas. They primarily buy tickets to see/hear the "standards" like Tosca, and even those of Gluck or Handel since they are "appropriately" old. New operas rarely make it into the rep of an opera company on an ongoing basis. Ballet can be very different than that of course where many members of the audience relish new works or at least relatively comtemporary works

http://www.ibdb.com/Show.asp?id=1484

Both are just listed as 'Dancer' here. I've got the CD as well, which has 13 singer/actors on the cover, and neither Hayden nor Barker are there. Must have been a marvelous show, I wonder if anybody goes back far enough to have seen it.

I suppose there could also be an opera version of 'The Turning Point' with Kiri TeKanawa and Renee Fleming, and films of real dancers like in the movie. Dreadful idea, methinks. Better to do an opera with Picasso, Diaghilev, Balanchine later an aging Pavlova maybe, real dancers just dancing Nijinsky, young Pavlova, etc.--half-ballet/half-opera. Yeah, that has possibilities. A Ballets Russes opera.

Sandy,

Point taken. However, both ballet and opera are struggling with be relegated to being museum objects. Don't misunderestimate (hhahaha) me here, I love the classical historical aspect of both.

However, we DO see modern version of the classics in both genres. We've been through BT discussions about R&J and Sleeping Beauty recently. And I have seen in just a few years the Met stage new productions of Lucia, Madama Butterfly, La Traviata and so forth. And there was an opera Lulu in Germany and others which are completely new as is the work of "modern" ballet choreographers.

Of course new productions are expensive... probably in the millions. But... if someone creates something new and it looks good, I would think that there is a chance to get it produced. Why not? We can't be watching the same 100 operas for the rest of time. Can we?

I would think that artist and creative people would want to do new things with their craft.

Yes, it's possible, because everything is always expensive. There aren't going to be many things done like this, but if somebody is inspired they never let the production costs get in their way. In fact, if they think of that at the beginning, they aren't inspired. Things like this can always start more modestly and then grow, just the way off-Broadway things sometimes grow into Broadway productions. The only other way is if something like this is commissioned by someone(s) who has it as a favourite dream-idea and then approaches an established composer. There could easily be something sort of Sondheim done with this sort of idea, but I wouldn't hope so.

Yes, but that's not the problem I'm talking about. New productions of the classics are not in trouble; what's in trouble is brand new operas commissioned and composed from scratch. Not that there aren't Artistic Directors who are willing to attempt it, but as I understand it, opera audiences simply do not show up year after year to see brand new operas (a new production of Tosca is a completely different matter). To my observation ballet audiences are very different in this regard. Many in the ballet audience only come out to see the classics such a Sleeping Beauty, but there is a large fraction of the ballet audience (50%???) that loves to see brand new works. And some of these new works stick around and become part of some company's ongoing rep.

Here's a test (rhetorically speaking): name me 3 choreographers doing brand new works recently for the ballet. Easy right? Now name me 3 composers who have done a brand new opera lately. Not so easy. Of course, a 20-30 minute ballet is far cheaper to mount than a brand new opera. But my point concerns where the audience appetite is for newly composed works.

I don't know if there are new dance works that are so ongoing as there were before. But 'audience appetite' is probably correct for opera--rather the lack of it. In any case, an opera about ballet is not by any stretch of the imagination going to be something many people are clamouring for; no way are they even thinking about it. The only such a thing could happen is if some composer wanted it deeply as some labour of love project, and that could happen. It wouldn't have to open at the Met or a big house. I don't see it happening, but then it's also possible to think of shorter operas. If you take 'Liebeslieder Walzer' as a kind of vague model, in which the singers onstage are nevertheless within the context of the ballet, and reverse it--you could have a one-act opera about ballet with the opera as the dominant context and the dancers as the subtext. This sounds possible if any new operas at all are being made. If they aren't, then all talk of new operas is useless; but if they are (and surely they are and I just don't keep up with them, then any subject is game--of course, for failure probably even more likely than success). It's just a matter if there is the creative need by artists to do it. I would think it would not be unappealing for opera audiences, though, as a subject, because many operagoers are also ballet goers, perhaps more in Seattle and London and Paris and Russia than in New York, but artists do tend to continue to surprise me with unexpected subjects that would seem to be quite outmoded and attract no audience at all. I just can't think of the composer. Ned Rorem is too old, but it would need to be someone along those lines, and might well be a European or Russian I ought to know about and don't. The subject would interest me if it were about historical figures if there were some way to make it dramatically viable. Could easily end up like an opera version of 'Mayerling', I'd think, which would be disastrous. Main thing would be to come up with a real story about ballet that is going to interest at least some elite group, and probably make a short opera out of it. Aren't the new works that 'make it' in ballet today mostly short works also?

When G Balanchine was Ballet Master for the Metropolitan Opera in 1936-7 (about) he did a production of Gluck's Orpheus, which had the singers in the pit and the dancers onstage. Not so popular. He was fired soon thereafter.

From the Balanchine Foundation website: "In 1936, he mounted a dance-drama version of Gluck's Orfeo and Eurydice, controversial in that the singers were relegated to the pit while the dancers claimed the stage."

Perhaps we could make an opera out of On Your Toes! Imagine the coloratura potential of the great exit line "Sohn of ha BEEEEEETCH" as rendered by, say, Kathleen Battle.

Last Season I saw Death In Venice danced at BAM which was based on the nove of the same name. Philip Glass has done new operas and although they may not be popular with audiences who are in love with the classics, I do think we need some energetic geniuses to create some new opera and why not one which somehow involves ballet as a theme?

Operas are about all sorts of things when you think about it from the Magic Flute, to La Traviata, to Aida and so on. You certainly can't have a ballet "about opera" but you could use ballet and characters associated with ballet in the "plot". I can think or all sorts of stories to build one on. But I haven't a clue as to how an opera is created...except the music is done after the libretto I believe.

Most of the stories are about the same themes, love found, lost, tragedy, jealousy, triumph.. all the usual things which we go through every day... but are hardly bored by when we sit for 3 hours and see it all over again.

What appeals to me about the idea is that I love both ballet and opera and they share music and a stage. In fact many operas have dance / ballet in them is a small way, like the dancing at a ball or something. But the dancing is always incidental so to speak. Of course, that may be because we always think that the dancer would have to be a singer and the likelihood of that is little at all. But there are ways around that issue. Trust me...

Someone will do this and do it well one of these days. It will be an opera... but it will have lots of ballet in it and people will enjoy it. Why not?

There have been more than a half dozen full-length ballets that were choreographed since 2000 that are being premiered or remounted this year, and, typically, they are major investments in terms of score -- at least four of them have original scores -- as well as sets and costumes:

The Snow Queen (Michael Corder/Sergei Prokovief) -- Birmingham Royal Ballet, premieres this month.
Carmen, The Passion (Mauricio Wainrot, Elizabeth Raum [original score]) -- Royal Winnipeg Ballet (I think new). They've also performed his Carmina Burana and The Messiah in the past few years.
Peter Pan (Septime Webre, Carmon DeLeone [original score]) -- Ballet British Columbia, Dayton Ballet (2000)
Wurthering Heights (Kader Belarbi, Philippe Hersant [original score]) -- Paris Opera Ballet (2002)
An Italian Straw Hat (James Kudelka, Michael Torke [original score]) -- National Ballet of Canada (2005)
Alice's Wonderland (Giorgio Madia, Nino Rota) -- Staatsoper Berlin (2005)
Aladdin (Gerard Charles, no composer I can find) -- Ballet Met (premiere)
Caligula (Nicolas Le Riche, Antonio Vivaldi) -- Paris Opera Ballet (2005)

Extending to 1999, Dracula (Michael Pink, Phillip Feeney [original score?]) -- Colorado Ballet and David Nixon's version, with music by Michael Daugherty, Arvo Part, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Alfred Schnittke, to be performed by Ballet Met, and squeezing back to 1997, Ben Stevenson's Dracula, to be performed by Pennsylvania Ballet and Texas Metropolitan Ballet, with music by Franz Liszt.

The common things I see are:

1. These productions are generally family-friendly (Well maybe not Caligula)
2. It helps to have the resources of a major institution
3. You can get away with less opulent sets than in opera, if the costumes are nice.
4. Those underpaid dancers are a lot less expensive than opera singers.
5. Ballet seasons tend to be locked in place the year before, while opera singers need to be locked into contract two to five years ahead of time, and they want to know what they are singing. If Company XYZ has a hit with its Dracula, other companies can rent the sets and costumes and present the ballet themselves within a year or two, while in opera, unless there is a formal or informal arrangement to co-produce/rent early on, by the time anyone else can schedule it, even the most popular opera can lose the buzz of the premiere. Speight Jenkins said that he had contracted with Focile (and maybe Burden?) to sing something else in the October time slot, when Peter Gelb mentioned the opportunity to co-produce Iphigenia in Tauris. If Focile and others contracted for the other opera were uninterested in this work, I suppose they'd be let out of their contracts, and Jenkins would have had to find available lead singers with relatively little notice (for opera) to take up the opportunity.

That's good information, Helene, especially to have the full-length ballets all in one place. Now I will try to look up some of those in the archives. Have you seen any of these?

I've seen some opera productions which very "sparse" sets,including La Traviata (Germany w/ Netrebko and Villazon), Rigoletto (in Firenze)..a Magic Flute by Igmar Bergman even Madame Butterfly by the Met.. both the Menghila and the former production. These are not the spectacles like Aida or Turandot for sure, or the new Met Zauberflote. Ballet sets seem to be less elaborate and more "abstract", don't they?

Some Balanchine masterpieces, Agon, for one, have no sets at all.

I don't know that many abstract operas, but some directors treat them as such.

The big ballet sets, however opulent, need to reserve space, and while there are exceptions, like the stairs in Ashton's Cinderella, in which the heroine makes a grand entrance coming down them on point, most of the time, the stage is pretty clear for dancing.

An aside: Actually, the audience for opera is growing, is growing in the younger age brackets especially, and new works are increasing in popularity.

From the Opera America website:

“OPERA America serves the field of professional opera and related organizations. In the United States, it counts 116 professional companies in 44 states in its membership. It also serves 19 professional companies in 5 provinces in Canada, which are members of Opera.ca. Over half of these companies were established after 1970, and one quarter of the total were established since 1980, making the growth of opera throughout North America a relatively new phenomenon.”

“Opera attendance rose steadily from 1982 to 2002. The U.S. opera audience grew by 35% between 1982 and 1992. This trend continued through 2002, when the opera audience grew by an additional 8.2%, representing the largest increase of all performing arts disciplines. (Source: National Endowment for the Arts)”

“In 2002, 25.3% of the U.S. opera audience was under the age of 35 years old. (Source: National Endowment for the Arts)”

And, while the familiar old warhorses (e.g., Carmen, La Boheme, Nozze di Figaro, etc) remain the most popular (or at least the most frequently staged) operas in US theaters, newly commissioned and composed operas are hardly rare events:

“In 2006-07, North American opera companies will produce 10 world premieres. Since 1990, almost 200 new operatic works have been produced by professional opera companies in North America.”

A quote from Marc Scorca, president of Opera America: "What is unique about the years since 1990 is the ubiquity of new works across the country at companies large and small. New works have become a part of the way we do business. It's wonderful these days to go to a new work and stand in the lobby at intermission and hear informed comparative discussion about other new American works." (From a Detroit Free Press article around the time of Margaret Garner's premiere there in 2005. Margaret Garner was composed by Richard Danielpour to a libretto by Toni Morrison.)

New York City Opera generally mounts a NY or US premiere each year – this year’s Margaret Garner being an example – and they usually sell out. Mark Adamo, John Adams, William Bolcom, Richard Danielpour, Anthony Davis, Deborah Drattel, John Harbison, Jake Heggie, Peter Lieberson, Tobias Picker, Charles Wuorinen have all seen at least one newly-composed opera staged within the last decade. Philip Glass is currently composing ”The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five” with a libretto by Doris Lessing based on her novel. (good timing, given yesterday’s Nobel announcement!) Even Stuart Copeland (yes, the Police drummer) has composed an opera.

My guess is that if NYCO had simulcast its season-operning performance of Margaret Garner on a big screen, Lincoln Center Plaza would have been full just as it was for the Met’s Butterfly last year and Lucia this year.

Kathleen,

Thanks for posting that article. I sensed that the idea was not as crazy as it sounds and further that audiences are receptive and almost demanding something new on the opera stage.

Now, to get that idea off the ground. Just another one of my crazy ideas for the arts.

My sense is that performance artist DO like to do new and creative edgey work... hoping that it might be really good. So much art when it was introduced was not taken seriously, only to now be thought of as "classic". Practically every movement in "modernism" beginning with the impression had such a reception.

There will be an opera "about" ballet... and a good one. It's only a matter of time.

Re: CALIGULA by Le Riche of POB, and mentioned by Helene above. This sounds interesting to me, based on Camus. The threads of POB that mention it do not say anything about the piece. In the meantime, does anyone know anything about it or have you seen it? Admittedly, this sounds more interesting to me than a full-length 'Wuthering Heights' which they've also got.

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=24418

When I was looking for 'Caligula' in POB forum, there was talk of two 'opera-ballets' by Estelle, which may, among others, suggest the many hybrids that open up some of these matters. These are Waltz's 'Romeo and Juliet' to the Berlioz, and Pina Bausch's 'Orphee et Eurydice'. I'd like to hear about these as well.

Or better yet (because of her superior fioritura abilities and similar diva behavior) Angela Georghiu.

Articles about Waltz's 'Romeo and Juliet' . I haven't seen it, since tickets are so expensive and it isn't really my taste:

http://www.nysun.com/article/64116
http://www.lesechos.fr/info/loisirs/4633605.htm
http://www.figaroscope.fr/opera_danse/2007100200025076.html
http://www.liberation.fr/culture/283414.FR.php
http://www.edicom.ch/fr/news/culture/1186_4366401.html


a video (I hope it's OK, the link is to an official site..If not, please delete it)
http://videos.tf1.fr/video/news/culture/0,...-bastille-.html

"As with "Romeo and Juliet," there are quibbles to have with the storytelling. But in its intelligent choices and smooth, beautiful choreography, this "Wuthering Heights" shows how ballet can move into the future — without causing everyone to cringe."

That, from the New York Sun, expresses the sensation I've gotten both from the clip and from the articles about all these full-length ballets. There's a sharpness that is not unromantic to them I find very appealing that I haven't been aware of in newer ballets in New York. The 'Wuthering Heights' turns out to sound worthwhile after all. No matter what the reservations expressed about 'Caligula', 'Wuthering Heights' and Waltz's 'Romeo and Juliet', there is clearly something going on at POB that makes me want to see all of these works in a way that has not struck me about any new work I've heard about at NYCB or various other companies. And then there is the well-known orchestral excellence, there was Gergiev mentioned here. These full-length ballets do express and give great hope, whether or not they are failures. What I like, I think, about the stories written about all of them, is that these ballets all sound very ambitious and perhaps gutsy.

Many thanks again, cygneblanc. Interview with Waltz is quite worthwhile.

Serendipitously, I happened to attend Seattle Opera's new production of Iphigenia in Tauris today. I have never seen so much dance in an operatic production before. I found it stunning. This was the brain child of director Steven Wadsworth who always fills the stage with relevant action and movement. In this case (based on ancient Greek tragedy) he used dance to accomplish his ends. Since this production is a joint effort between Seattle Opera and the Met, you folks in NYC will get to see this marriage of dance and opera next month. True, the dance is essentially incidental to the opera, but it is a fundamental a part of this production none the less. I thought it worked extremely well, and demonstrated how dance and singers can be incorporated into a opera chorus to great effect by a creative director.

Sandy,

Thanks for the heads up. I am looking forward to see that they do. When I raised the issue in this topic it occurred to me that there is no reason not to have more "movement" in opera, that is more like a Broadway musical, but with more sophisticated singing and dance. Broadway musicals always impressed me as performance art somewhat derivative of opera.

And as far as themes of opera and story ballet, why can't ballet, or the theatre be the theme, subject etc. of an opera? In many ways it's hard to related to some characters and stores in opera (and ballet)... like Aida for example. By the way, Tosca is an opera which has a opera singer as its main character. It's kind of self referential in that way.

I am not expert on opera librettos, but some of them we can relate to a bit more and their stories seem as if they could be or are rooted in reality or drawn from reality, like La Traviata, for example. On the other hand we have some lovely fairy tales like the Magic Flute. So why not an opera whose theme involves ballet? I think it could be visually very exciting. Some times seeing opera singer standing and belting out arias I wonder why all the elaborate sets... the action is so minimal and almost unnecessary.

Anyway... it was just a thought. And as both these performance art forms are living ones as well as "relics" of the past, there's no reason that someone will make my vision real.

What I think you will like in this production's use of dance is that the ballet-like dance is not done in interlude, but incorporated directly into the action. The chorus is an integration of both singers and dancers just as we speculated on earlier in this thread.


As I commented in an earlier post, I agree with you. In fact, I'd love to see this done, and I believe the problems of "singer/dancer" and "dancer/singer" could be solved by proper direction -- just as Wadsworth did here in "Iphigenia in Tauris".