By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 15 May 2011]
How do you create “inner” realism in opera without recourse to the sort of “outer” realism that stifles the imagination? It is a question that preoccupied Verdi but finds little resonance in opera production today. Thrashing around for something new to say about familiar works, most companies propose either a superficial update of the composer’s scenic descriptions or something so far removed from them that what we see bears no relation to what we hear.