Rossini's five act grand opera Guilliaume Tell is having a controversial run of performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London. Damiano Michelietto's new production includes a rape scene, not in any way included by the composer in the opera's premiere in Paris in 1830.
"A Royal Opera House production of Rossini's Guilliaume Tell that opened in London's Covent Garden Monday night was heckled and booed for incorporating a scene in which a young woman is stripped naked and molested by army officers..." reported the Guardian U.K. Director Damiano Michieletto, responding to vociferous booing and walkouts following the scene stated, "If you don't feel the brutality, the suffering these people had to face, if you want to hide it, it becomes soft, it becomes for children." Further news reports indicate the scene has not been eliminated, but "toned down."
It's true that many opera productions are updated. Some have worked well: Carmen set during the Spanish Civil War, Rigoletto set in Rat-Pack era Las Vegas, Salome done at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Tosca staged to look like Mussolini's Italy, Norma addressing her troops from the back of a truck. Never mind that Norma is talking to Druids in 50 B.C. according to the libretto, or that Herod in Salome fears and reveres John the Baptist (in 1967?).
William Tell is known for the last three minutes its overture, and for a hero shooting an apple of off his son's head. There's a magnificent and long opera at the end of the overture about Swiss patriots looking to liberate their country from the Austrians. What there is not is music of any violence.
I remember years ago a director wanted to stage La boheme during the students riots in 1960s Paris. One wise conductor commented, "Listen to the music. When would you start throwing rocks?"
Listen to the music. Here's a good example of non vocal music from William Tell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlXBma58JPE
Rossini had no idea what a real battlefield looked like. That didn't begin to change until Matthew Brady set out to photograph the American Civil War. Rossini and his colleagues used music and text. Singers and conductors were trusted to understand the score enough to use great passion and expression. In the score itself you would find everything you needed to hear the sounds of war and of suffering. Some directors today assume the public is either too dumbed down, unresponsive to music, or so desensitized that they need a rape to hit them over the heads.
All the public needs is an attentive reading of the score. Rossini and his librettist have done all the work. A rape on stage, in this era of continued violence toward women, is nothing but gratuitous junk. Shut up and listen to the music.
