music theatre in flanders - Muziekcentrum Vlaanderen

OperA And prOTeST
The (western) traditional audience initially struggled with the revolution
in the opera houses. In the early days of the Gielen/Zehelein
directorate at the Frankfurt Opera, for instance, Ruth Berghaus’s
or Hans Neuenfels’s premières met with storms of furious, and
even fascistic protest. But in the wake of the new and fresh aesthetics
gradually emerged a growing younger group of supporters
who re-discovered opera as a socially relevant art form (note: the
author of this article was with this new audience herself.) By the
end of the Gielen/Zehelein decade, the audience profile had visibly
changed and rejuvenated: the message had come through. Similar
processes took place at various other German opera houses.
At first, innovative music theatre was severely punished: subscriptions
were cancelled and the attendance dropped dramatically,
and it was tough going to build a new and younger audience.
Depending on change of management and/or artistic profile of a
house, similar cyclic processes of renewal also occur today.
In Belgium, this process appears to take place less dramatically
as a result of structural differences. In spite of the sometimes
progressive repertoires, the major subsidized houses continue
to enjoy strong public response. They have no problem with
attendance thanks to the ‘ensuite system’, a system with a limited
number of performances of productions which are scheduled
consecutively. The attendance is almost 100%! Still, to draw the
conclusion that a status quo is good enough would be a mistake.
Today, the audience have taken a giant step forward. Even the
more extreme, radical interpretations, such as Calixto Bieito’s,
can count on enthusiastic response. There is a promising generation
of young directors, who attract yet a new young generation.
Aficionados of tonal opera – from Monteverdi to Richard Strauss
– appear to be younger than thirty years ago, and, what is more,
they network on an international scale.
COnTeMpOrAry OperA And ITS AudIenCe
With Schoenberg’s and Berg’s dodecaphonic music theatre, the
contemporary opera scene, that had to make its way along a very
thorny path, finally begins to attract full houses at the renowned
opera houses. A lot of managers failed to accomplish their cultural
mission to stimulate contemporary music theatre, sometimes
out of ignorance, of anticipating obedience to an alleged
public taste, and for fear of empty seats and box offices. Today,
that situation has partly changed: opera houses do schedule
contemporary opera more often and attract special attention by
means of attractive and persuasive publicity campaigns, sidebar
activities, non-conventional frameworks, educational projects
and workshops. As a result, these contemporary operas attract
bigger audiences than, say, twenty years ago.
Next to its grand opera repertoire, which always includes one
or two contemporary operas, the Stuttgart Zeitoper, for instance,
successfully schedules smaller, experimental performances you
would rather expect in the independent circuit. In those cases, the
grand Staatsoper Stuttgart’s repute acts as a deliberate bridge
builder between various target audiences and thus generates
new audiences.
Still, contemporary music theatre and its new forms of interdisciplinary
communication between the stage and the public
have, so far, not made it to the real opera repertoire. Even today,
many managers still stage 20 th or 21 st -century operas merely as a
front to legitimize themselves culturally and to secure subsidies.
The IndependenT MuSIC TheATre SCene
During the 1980s, a separate international experimental music
theatre scene emerged, partly out of protest against the opera
64 65
table of contents