If any past body of work can serve us, it must be by being itself, by presenting credible alternatives to our assumptions and prejudices. If it has none to offer, it should be discarded. E-19, though, is being tormented precisely because it is credible. It’s as if we feared that to long for transcendence or romance, to empathize with the rage of the dispossessed man or the sublimity of the self-sacrificing woman, or to stir to the trumpet and drum of militaristic nationalism, were to endure all the associated political, social, and religious constructs. It is not. It is only to feel their power, to be reminded that they are grounded in living human issues and that we are not changed in the twinkling of an eye, but in halting and painful steps. To be an interpretive artist is to face, and convey, such truths. The artist’s own political beliefs (for instance) may well incline in other directions. But that is of no consequence, for the artist’s obligation is to bring an artistic perspective to bear on politics, not to sell art into political servitude. It is to advocate and embody, not to evaluate and adjudicate.

“Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art,” reads one of Stanislavski’s most beautiful admonishments. E-19 is hot, not cool. Its performance values embrace the concepts of authorship, expression, and interpretation in the common meanings of those terms. Its theatre is illusionistic, asking for belief. It will return to life when we begin to work from the individual to the concept; when our auteurs confine their critique to criticism, their creative revision to new work; when they see themselves less as authorities and more as collaborators with performers who are themselves in fuller possession of their creative identities. That this requires major adjustment in training and rehearsal processes goes without saying, but there is nothing terribly mysterious about it. Whether we undertake such a project or continue our game of dress-up-hide-and-seek is a matter of preference, pure and simple.

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NEXT TIME: Recently, my attention has been called to some contentious goings-on in operatic corners of the social media concerning technical and interpretive advice being handed down to young singers from high places (e.g., the Musical Director of the Metropolitan Opera). The tone is impolite, but the questions being raised are valid, and have disturbing potential implications. So I guess some thought-through words are called for. That’ll be in three weeks, on Friday, Oct. 11.