For two decades, Ileana Cotrubas was at the apex of the international music scene. A celebrated lyric soprano renowned for her intense portrayals of Violetta, Mimi, and Gilda, Cotrubas retired in 1990 at the age of 51. But Cotrubas has not settled quietly into her beautiful home in the South of France. Instead she has dedicated herself to “the greatest passion in my life — everything that has to do with music and singing.”
Cotrubas participates in master classes and competitions throughout Europe and teaches privately with great enthusiasm. She is also concerned about the future of opera and the kind of productions in which young singers now appear. For this reason, she takes every opportunity to fight against Regietheater, which she sees as artistic prostitution and a parasitism that is destroying opera. With the help of her husband, Manfred Ramin, Cotrubas has written a strong attack on Regietheater in her book Opernwahrheiten (Truth in Opera). The book, which caused a stir in well-known European publications such as Opernwelt, completely sold out its first printing and a second appeared four months later in April 1999.
What exactly is Regietheater? Cotrubas cites the Brockhaus dictionary, which defines Regietheater as a “free production, for which the original text is only a noncommittal starting point.” In Regietheater productions, directors take the original work as a base. They feel free to change the setting and personalities of the characters according to their own ideas while ignoring the ideas of the composer and his librettist. “Why are these people not writing their own operas on their own subjects? Why are they destroying classic operas?” asks the soprano.
The Cotrubas point of view is difficult to dismiss because she is not against innovation. To illustrate her ideas, she compares two examples of radical restagings of classical pieces. Years ago Peter Brook caused controversy in New York and elsewhere with his adaptation of Carmen, which played at Lincoln Center for several months. Regardless of one’s opinion of Brook’s staging, Cotrubas feels that Brook did something new. He also clearly identified his production as his own view of a classic work, and he even renamed the “new” work The Tragedy of Carmen to make the distinction clear.
The singer contrasts Brook’s work with the stagings of Peter Sellars, which infuriate her. Sellars, of course, is the director responsible for what reviewers have called the most radical opera stagings of our time. His Don Giovanni is set in the drug culture of the South Bronx where the title character “shoots up” on stage and fries and shakes are served at dinner, while his Marriage of Figaro is set in Trump Tower.
Cotrubas argues that Sellars says he is directing a new production of a classic opera, but he is actually producing a different piece. According to Miss Cotrubas, “directors like Peter Sellars destroy opera. They are like parasites on great operatic works. Sellars produces his nightmares, and singers like Samuel Ramey, who sang Don Giovanni in a Sellars production in Paris, go along with it.”
Peter Sellars was neither the first to practice what is now called Regietheater nor the last – unfortunately. According to Miss Cotrubas, one sees nothing but Regietheater productions in Europe these days. She reports that “you can now go to Hamburg and see Lohengrin set in a school room or Munich where Tristan is set on a cruise ship. These productions take away our ability to use our imaginations and to have real encounters with great masterpieces. Just as years ago, at the time when the generation of 1968 revolted, we are today confronted on stage with the ugliness of human behavior, sex, and politics. In the course of the years, our society became even uglier, and when we come to the opera house now we are still confronted with ugliness. To change our society, we need a new idealism, and the arts can help us find a new approach to dealing with the problems of our time.”
Worst of all, Cotrubas feels, such opera productions hurt singers, and she knows firsthand what it feels like to be a passionate, committed, and well-prepared singer trapped in a Regietheater production. “I was offered a gala performance of Traviata in Zurich with Thomas Hampson as Papa Germont and Luis Lima as Alfredo. Before I signed the contract, I asked about the production, and I was told that it was very classic and respected the indications in the score. But they changed the production without telling me and when I arrived for rehearsals, I was confronted with unbelievable nonsense.”
Why was the production so awful? “First of all, it was not the right period,” says Cotrubas who feels that this kind of change makes a great difference. For example, in Violetta’s epoch it was natural for her to agree to what Papa Germont was asking of her. A few decades later, she would have been more likely to say, “Get out of my house and return to your provincial surroundings.” A change of period does much more than change the scenery and the costumes. In the Zurich production, Miss Cotrubas continues, “The production had nothing to do with the original story or the great music of Verdi or the drama in the opera. My goodness, it was a disaster.”
Of course, Cotrubas tried to get out of her contract, but the Zurich Opera made it clear that they intended to sue. She agreed to sing, but during the curtain calls at the end of the performance, she could contain herself no longer. She addressed the audience and told them that “this was not my Traviata” in no uncertain terms. And this is exactly what Cotrubas feels that singers now must have the courage to do also.
However, Cotrubas does understand the realities of the situation, especially for singers who are just starting out. Should young, unknown singers refuse to sing in Regietheater productions? “I know it is very difficult to say, ‘I will not do this rubbish,’ because there are hundreds of others outside waiting to take your place and do every kind of artistic prostitution just to be in the profession. It is very difficult to say no and be out of work.”
For young singers, Cotrubas advises making a clear statement of their ideals. “I would tell them to do it, but to take every opportunity to discuss with the rest of the singers and the director why it is wrong. Singers are not united. Talented and well-prepared young singers who believe in their profession must fight for what they believe in. Only from the original work and a production that follows the indications in the score will they learn and at the same time preserve their souls and their ideals. Everyone has a voice inside that tells them whether they are doing right or wrong. If they listen to their inner voice, they will do the right thing. They should not be traitors to themselves.”
On the other hand, Cotrubas feels that established singers have a responsibility to fight against Regietheater productions. For example, Placido Domingo recently appeared in a production of Le Prophète in Vienna where, according to Miss Cotrubas, “the only thing they wouldn’t allow on stage was having sex with animals. There they drew the line. Placido said that the production was not his style, but he didn’t want to let the Staatsoper down. This is rubbish. I respect and admire this great singer, but he was just the right person to say no. Singers complain in private, but in public they tow the party line. They are just cowards. And conductors bear an even greater responsibility. They are the greatest cowards.”
As an antidote to today’s Regietheater, Cotrubas recommends that young singers study the score to see how librettists and conductors describe scenery and actions and trust their own imaginations. ”A production in the opera house or on video which does not correspond is simply wrong in 99% of the cases.” Of her own performances, which are preserved on video, Miss Cotrubas suggests that young singers watch Sir Peter Hall’s early work at Glyndebourne (“his Figaro is a classic”) and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Idomeneo and Zauberflöte from Salzburg (“Ponnelle loved singers”).
Recently Cotrubas saw Giorgio Strehler’s Così fan tutte at Piccolo Teatro in Milan. “I wish all young singers could see this Strehler production. It had very simple stage sets, the cast of young unknown singers was fantastic, and everything was right musically. This modern staging makes Regietheater productions look very dated. If you flip through the opera magazines of the last twenty years, you will see that productions, whether of Alcina, Zauberflöte, or Rheingold, all look the same, full of trench coats and suitcases and crammed full of ‘symbols’.”
As is obvious from her strong feelings about Regietheater, Miss Cotrubas is an idealist, and this can also be seen in her attitude toward teaching. “I teach because I love it. I want to share my experiences and pass them down to younger singers. But I am a very demanding teacher, because I had very demanding teachers and I was always very severe on myself. I ask a lot from the very first lesson. I ask for hard work. Please underline hard work.”
A number of great singers who now teach feel that a young singer must be absolutely secure technically before they can concentrate on interpretation. Cotrubas completely disagrees. “I teach both technique and interpretation, because you cannot separate them. I think it is nonsense to say that you have to develop a rock solid technique first and then think about interpretation later. You have to develop both of them at the same time. If you explain technique too clinically, as is often done today, you will forget everything about ‘singing,’ and this is the worst disaster you can have. I have to warn American singers about this especially. Often they are fantastic technically, but they lose all the emotion.”
How does Ileana Cotrubas choose her students?. “First they have to choose me!” she answers with a laugh. “I ask them to send me tapes and sometimes I look at videos. But what is most important for me in choosing students is the quality of their voices and the singers’ musicality and the personality you can hear in the voice. I have always had rapport with my students, perhaps because I have listened intently to their tapes and I like the color of their voices.”
Cotrubas warns young singers against going from teacher to teacher, and she is also very honest about a singer’s chances in the highly competitive opera world. “I think it is the responsibility of teachers to tell singers that have not been making any progress for five or six years that they should look for another profession. A singer has to be born. They cannot be made. We teachers can only help a little.”
“Competitions are good experience, but young singers should be careful not to become ‘competition singers.’ Competitions allow young singers to see what others are doing, and it is good experience to prepare a competition program. But young singers should not do too many.”
Whether fighting against the excesses of Regietheater or imparting her ideals about great singing to her students, Ileana Cotrubas continues to live intensely. “I was lucky to find the right moment to retire. I was never a physically strong singer, and my parts were very demanding. I burned myself out in a way, especially emotionally. I had sung all the parts I had dreamed of in the most beautiful productions and with the greatest singer colleagues and conductors. And besides I could not accept doing productions that are against the intentions of our great composers.” Listening to her speak today, one finds Ileana Cotrubas to be the same passionate idealist she was on the stage.
