Notes

Interview/Jonathan Miller
Newsweek
30/1/1995 p.56

Can opera be made relevant for today's theater audiences?
M: I hate the term relevant. It implies that the opera or the work from the distant past is on probation and will only justify its continued existence by directly engaging either the political or social concerns of the current audience. Thi sis an idiotic way of approaching art ...

Why should people take an interest in opera?
M:They shouldn't, unless they decided to. It is a stilted art form and difficult to approach ...

Yet there is still the problem of inducing today's audience to identify with ...
M: The problem is what one does with works that have entered their afterlife, that exist in a period which their author could not have possibly envisioned. ... This is the fate of art that outlives its own time. The director's task is akin to taking an animal out of the wild and remounting it in a museum in a convincing posture.