HERE is a treasure.
Opera DVDs tumble out by the dozens nowadays, too often featuring routine performances of recent productions that hardly seem worth preserving. In contrast Arthaus's scholarly and imposing “Walter Felsenstein Edition" offers a fascinating glimpse of an important moment in operatic history now vanished.
It all comes in a weighty 12-by-12-inch box: 12 discs containing seven opera productions directed by Felsenstein, filmed between 1956 and 1976; generous video extras showing him in rehearsal and discussing his concepts; a detailed technical explanation of how this historic material was rescued and restored; a 100-page lavishly illustrated hardcover book filled with essays in German and English about Felsenstein's life, work, philosophy and views on the operas at hand; and numerous facsimiles of relevant documents, literally tied with a red ribbon and suitable for framing. The price is $320 to $500, depending on where you buy your DVDs, but no one concerned about the development of opera production over the last half-century will regret the outlay.
Already something of a misty legend at the time of his death in 1975, Felsenstein is now largely forgotten by the public. It's possible that American opera fans who regard the Met as the center of the universe may never have heard of him at all.
A brilliant director, the founder of the innovative Komische Oper in East Berlin in 1947, alternately praised and condemned as the principal architect of what Germans today call Regieoper (an approach to production in which the stage director is the defining element and guiding force), Felsenstein has had many successors and imitators. He strongly influenced the work of famous disciples like Gtz Friedrich, Harry Kupfer and Joachim Herz. Sarah Caldwell, at her Opera Company of Boston, was one of the few Americans to adopt Felsenstein's methods. But the master's personal touch remains inimitable.
Those who know Felsenstein only by name and reputation may be surprised when they see these productions, which seem downright conservative compared to the radical reimaginings of standard-repertory works that dominate Regieoper in Germany today. Felsenstein was never interested in updating the action, relocating plots, shocking his public with outrageous concepts or using opera to argue arcane intellectual points that never occurred to the composer. Nor did he invariably make acting his first priority, as some critics still insist, leaving the music to take care of itself. Quite the contrary.
