Yesterday Music Times reported that Woody Allen would be reprising his role as the director for Gianni Schicci, an opera by Puccini, and that Placido Domingo would star in the lead role to open the Los Angeles Opera's 2015-'16 season. Allen is far from the first director to be a fan of opera but he is one of the few who have bucked up and attempted to direct their own renditions of orchestral classics. Here are six other big names to try their hand at the theatre.
Roman Polanski
It's no surprise that the director behind classics such as Chinatown and Palme d'Or winner The Pianist would have time to try his hand at opera during the years in between. A few years after directing Chinatown he helmed Rigoletto, a Verdi opera, for the Bavarian State Opera in Germany. That was just a year prior to the director's notorious sexual assault case came to light, from which he fled during 1977 and has not returned to the United States since. He's stuck more to musicals since then, including a high-profile touring version of Amadeus at the turn of the century, although he'll soon be directing one of several shorts films titled Seven Deaths, which focus on Maria Callas, perhaps the biggest name in opera during the 20th Century.
Julie Taymor
This is somewhat cheating as, if anything, Julie Taymor is almost better know for her work as an opera director than for her work in film. She's staged operas for companies in the United States and abroad, but is probably most noted for her work on the Pulitzer-nominated Grendel for the Los Angeles Opera and Mozart's The Magic Flute for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which was revised for a second season and eventually brought on tour by Opera Australia. Taymor has found a happy in-between for film and opera, directing headlining musical adaptations on Broadway of The Lion King and Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark.
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is one of the most prevalent directors of opera and, well, anything. It's no surprise that the auteur is a fan of German operas, particular those by Wagner: He's staged productions of Doktor Faust, Lohengrin, The Flying Dutchman, Parsifal and has done Tannhäuser three separate times (although he's never tackled any of the conductor's epic 'Ring' cycle operas). That said, he's also spread himself around culturally, performing classics from Austria (The Magic Flute), Italy (Bellini's Norma), and even Japan with Chushingura, an operatic version of traditional lore composed by Shigeaki Saegusa.
Robert Lepage
Just in case you were wondering why Herzog didn't attempt Der Ring des Nibelungen, one of the most culturally relevant operas in the history of the genre (the stereotype of the woman with the horns? That's from this series, as is Wagner's famous sequence "The Ride of The Valkyries"), you might want to look at Canadian director Robert Lepage's rendition at the Met. He's been honored for his work as an actor and director, both on stage and on film, but apparently his interpretation of Der Ring was disastrous, if you take the New Yorker's word for it. The publication called the series "the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history." Lepage included a 45-ton, moving metal contraption onstage, adding even more pizzazz to a frequently over-the-top opera.
John Schlesinger
Those familiar with Midnight Cowboy, the only X-rated film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar, might be excited to know that director John Schlesinger also tried his hand at opera. Both were performed at The Convent in the director's hometown and both were "comedies": He first staged Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffman during 1980 and then later produced Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier in 1984. Schlesinger was no stranger to the "higher" arts, serving as associate director at the Royal National Theatre since 1973.
William Friedkin
William Friedkin's most noted work as a film director is easily The Exorcist, generally ranked among the most frightening movies of all time. It's not too surprising that he set his attention to one of the more disconcerting operas when he took to the stage, directing a version of Alban Berg's Wozzeck. The libretto deals with the title character, who begins to come off of his hinges due to ever-mounting criticism and pressure from his wife and superiors. As Wozzeck becomes more and more deranged, the atonal instrumentals of Berg turn this into a masterpiece of psychological horror, of which kind we would recommend Friedkin for any day.
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