Simon Williams, Timely Timelessness: ‘Regietheater’ at Bayreuth in the 1970s

November 2014, Volume 8, Number 3, 19–32.

There are probably as many objections to the presence of Regietheater in the operatic theatre as there are people to articulate them. But as one surfs the Internet blogs that are roiling with fury at the latest excesses of stage directors, usually German, common themes begin to emerge. Among the most frequent to appear is that the presence of an interpretative stage director violates the timelessness of the work. Few would deny that in the most basic sense Richard Wagner’s music dramas are timeless; they have, after all, never left the operatic repertoire and, for as long as opera is performed, they probably never will. But what does ‘timelessness’ mean when it comes to evaluating a work of art?