We must recognize that we cannot reproduce the cultural milieu in which Stanislavski and his allies worked. Western European opera of the E-19 era, with its emphasis on the agency of individuals and music written to exalt that, is a different beast from a Chekhov or Turgenev play, or even from most of Russian opera, wherein the narrative does not usually reflect that emphasis (the operas of Tchaikovsky are exceptions). And we cannot know what we would think of the productions of the Theatre of Musical Drama—where, not incidentally, the conductors, principally Mikhail Bikhter but extending to others as well, were heavily involved with the singing actors’ work, and where Adolphe Appia, no less, was brought in to work on movement, rhythm, and tempo. But they did big shows, and they did them not as our doughty small companies here in New York do them, but with full orchestra and chorus, in complete settings. Levik himself, in addition to his assumptions of leading singing roles (Rigoletto, the title part in The Demon, and Tonio—which, however, he considered a character role) sang Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, Klingsor in Parsifal, and Kochubei in Mazeppa (usually given to a bass). The TMD also staged Aïda, Boris Godunov and Khovanschina, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko and Snegorouchka—in short, large-scale operas, predominantly but not exclusively Russian.

And so far as I’m aware, that is the last time that happened—that is, that modern acting techniques were applied to the full-size operas of the Western canon in an integrated way and in a professional context. Whether from economic or physical limitation, unavailability of appropriate singers, ideological bias, or the reluctance of the directors themselves (all these involved in one case or another), its proponents have shied away from tackling anything we’d call grand opera, let alone Wagner or Strauss. It’s as if anything that smacks too strongly of the old high rhetorics, or simply of larger-than-life dimensions, or that cannot be brought down to a veristic or naturalistic style of performance, or whose staging requirements force the director’s hand to become visible, are beyond the reach of modern techniques, in which case those techniques must be accounted of very limited use. Walter Felstenstein’s Komische Oper in East Berlin probably came the closest to facing up to this problem with its Otello, but that brave example remained an isolated case. Even Frank Corsaro’s splendid Method-influenced productions at the New York City Opera, which benefitted from a higher level of singing talent, stuck to works of a more intimate, individual-character-based nature (Traviata, Butterfly, Pelléas). So a major challenge remains.

Which returns us to our “improvements.” When I was first becoming aware of these issues, in the 1950s and ’60s, and counting myself among the reform-minded, the primary problem as we saw it was to bring operatic acting into a more recognizably human form. And because the modern acting sensibility gradually permeated all Western theatrical culture over the first half of the last century (opera tagging along a couple of decades to the rear), that more or less happened, to all surface appearances. But seldom at a deeper level. Now the problem, as instanced by Trelinski’s Forza cast, is how to restore a sense of larger-than-life presence that will honor the aspirations of the old rhetorics without returning to their conventions, find an agreement between modern acting techniques and the great masterworks, and strike that deeper level with more consistency. That this downsizing of physical and temperamental presence has occurred in lockstep with the analogous shrinkage in vocal calibre and commitment should tell us that, while many developments have contributed to each,^(I) these twin diminishments must have enough in common to make it clear that they should be worked on together—that each may provide a key to the other. Obviously, a first step in terms of production is to rid ourselves of all concepts that require performers to tell one story with their mouths and throats while miming another with their bodies, and pretending to not notice the difference. Till that happens, opera remains corrupted at its root.  But even with that accomplished, the work just described will be waiting, and clearly it cannot be accomplished within the existing rehearsal and production system. New, from-the-top efforts will be needed, and that reminds us that “time and patience” quickly translate into something else. And I hesitate to raise that topic for two reasons, first, that it seems so hopeless of solution, and second, that it is the least popular of all among my readers. ^(II) I’ll only touch on it here, but it cannot be avoided.

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“—oh, what a nightmare!” exclaims Nemirovich-Danchenko in Chapter Seven of My Life in the Russian Theatre, wherein he relates the birthing pangs of the Moscow Art Theatre. “—the most necessary thing of all: money, money, and money!” All the independent Russian theatre and opera companies of those pre-Revolutionary days (that is, those that fell outside the state-supported Imperial system) were funded from private sources. There were several of them—in opera, the railroad baron Saava Mamontov’s, in which design was the binding force in an integrated-production concept; Zimin’s Private Opera, which staged the premiere of Rimsky’s The Golden Cockerel; the Narodny Dom, where Levik sang on his first arrival in St. Petersburg, and the Theatre of Musical Drama itself, among them. (I am not familiar with the financial arrangements of the provincial houses, but assume them to be not unlike those of Moscow and St. Petersburg.) Rich individuals of the fading nobility and aristocracy and of the rising mercantile and industrial class, each group envious of the other, ponied up considerable sums in support of highly speculative artistic enterprises. In the case of the MAT, Saava Morozov (don’t conflate with Mamontov), single-handedly responsible for the construction of the theatre that became the MAT’s home and an enthusiastic participant in the company’s administrative and artistic affairs, was the most important of the stockholders, whose advance contributions went to underwrite a full year of training and rehearsal before the doors were thrown open for the first performance. For the TMD, a factory owner named Ludwig Neischiller wrote a very large check for the even more perilous enterprise of a reformist opera company on no better assurance than Joseph Lapitzky’s promise that he’d learned from his previous failures.