The director Graham Vick, whose Il Trovatore was one of the most memorable fiascos in recent Metropolitan Opera history, and whose current Tannhäuser in San Francisco has been described as "unsightly and almost aggressively foolish" by Josh Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle, is complaining about film and theater directors infiltrating the opera business: "Opera is a completely different medium from film and theatre, and we forget that at our peril. If you don’t understand what a composer is trying to say musically, you’re not going to be able to express it. If you don’t understand the music, the opera won’t work. It’s that simple.” Why, then, do operas not infrequently fail to work when Vick directs them? Bring on Woody Allen, I say; he can't do any worse, and might do quite a bit better.
