Word: corsaro
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...responsible for the transformation is Stage Director Frank Corsaro, 43, who believes that operatic tradition is often nothing more than a catalogue of yesterday's clichés. As he showed with his productions of La Traviata and Madama Butterfly, Corsaro is a determined spoiler when he confronts the creaking plots of traditional opera. If he wants to bring on familiar characters at unexpected moments, he does so. If he decides to invent minor characters, he does that...
...Corsaro has the broadest theatrical background of any American director now working in opera. He plays the self-doubting undertaker in the new Joanne Woodward movie, Rachel, Rachel. His play, A Piece of Blue Sky, was done on TV in 1960. On Broadway, he directed A Hatful of Rain and The Night of the Iguana. What all this experience has given him is the confidence to look at an opera as though nobody had ever staged it before...
Sneaky Monk. When City Opera General Director Julius Rudel asked Corsaro to stage Faust, he got a wild-eyed stare in return. "I loathed Faust," Corsaro admits. "In fact, I've started off by basically disliking every opera that I've done so far. They all seemed like such old salami." But as he began thinking about it, he became fascinated with the prospect of doing Faust as a grim Gothic tale in which sheer horror and grizzly humor intertwine. He decided to introduce Mephistopheles in different guises that would fit credibly into each scene. After materializing first...
...Corsaro also concluded early on that he was not going to be influenced by Gounod's score, either. "It's sweet, it has charm and grace, and it's romantic -but it can bend any number of ways," he explains. Fortunately, Soprano Beverly Sills (Marguerite), Tenor Michele Molese (Faust), Bass Norman Treigle (Mephistopheles) and Conductor Rudel were on hand to see that it did not bend too much. Some traditionalists felt that it was going too far to deprive Marguerite of her usual departure for heaven in full view of the audience. But Corsaro decided that angels...
Despite its failings, Rachel, Rachel has several unassailable assets. The spiderweb score, written by Jerome Moross with the cooperation of Erik Satie and Robert Schumann, is the best of the year. Estelle Parsons, as Rachel's fellow schoolteacher, and Frank Corsaro, as a friendly neighborhood mortician, extend their roles beyond the boundaries of the movie...