For most stage directors, enticing audiences towards an appreciation of a work has always been something of an exercise in accommodation. That is, giving recherché knowledge the appropriate context. Style, epoch, provenance, language, politics, philosophy, etc., all amount to considerations that must be grappled with and reconciled, in one way or another, before an audience might find meaning or relevance in a performance. Witness the abiding success of an opera production like the Met’s Franco Zeffirelli Bohème, which takes all the bustle and hubbub of a Parisian street-scape and plops it down on the company’s stage in an effort of exacting verisimilitude. At the same time, consider the ways in which a production like Robert Wilson’s Lohengrin — an austere and hyper-stylized staging that also happens to be one of my favorite productions in the Met’s repertoire — arguably succeeds by emphasizing the universal and archetypal over the specific.

In this case, I’m not talking about the details of singing, acting or music, but rather the onstage creation of time and place, “setting.” And I can’t help but wonder if we’re living in an era of live performance that will amount to the setting-sun of traditional scenery and stagecraft. read more