In the director Yuval Sharon’s book “A New Philosophy of Opera,” he reflects on the plight of contemporary artists interpreting classic works, writing, “We can choose to either reinforce a studied and traditionalist view of the piece—as preservation—or we can attempt to liberate the spirit of the music, to present it in a way that’s completely of the moment.” For the past twenty years, Sharon has largely embodied the latter path, for which he has been recognized as one of the world’s foremost modernizers of opera. In 2020, he staged Wagner’s “Ring” cycle in a parking garage in Detroit. In 2023, he directed a version of Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” in which the titular hero mourned his lover, Eurydice, by listening to a turntable recording of her voice. Next week, the Met Opera will première his new production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” in which the mythic couple appear onstage dressed like any other contemporary pair. Not long ago, he sent us a few notes about books that relate to his simultaneously reverent and refreshing work.
Purgatorio
by Dante Alighieri
Last year, I decided to stop pretending I had read the Divine Comedy and actually make my way through it. To my astonishment, the classic poem became one of the most mind-expanding literary experiences of my life. After finishing it, I immediately went back and started a very slow second pass, accompanied by Mark Scarbrough’s extraordinary podcast “Walking with Dante.” (I can easily imagine starting all over again, for a third round.)
This time, I’ve been reading different translations. I particularly admire the poet Mary Jo Bang’s unabashedly contemporary version, which weaves in pop-cultural references with unfussy, plainspoken American English. Her version evokes what it must have felt like to be a contemporary of Dante’s, reading his poem and being addressed in your own language. Dante’s bracing directness, his pathos and humor, and his invention feel effortless. I also sense a kinship between Bang’s approach to the text and the way I interpret classic operas: “translating” them with immense care, but also an eye for how they land in contemporary life.
The Disappearance of Rituals
by Byung-Chul Han
Han is a Korean-born philosopher living in Germany, who is noted for, among other things, his critiques of neoliberalism. I love all of Han’s writing, but this book has been especially meaningful to me as an opera director: without speaking specifically about the highly ritualistic art form of opera, he diagnoses why it struggles for relevance in our culture. Han’s observations on ritual in contemporary society became a guiding force for our production of “Tristan.”
Han’s overarching argument is that the deterioration of our social fabric is due to ritual evaporating from everyday life. The result, he says, is an increasingly atomized and narcissistic society, where symbolic action gives way to digital data and wordless communion is replaced by rapid communication. This book is a powerful reminder of the purpose and potential of ritual actions, and what role the arts can serve in our alienated and desacralized times. As he writes, rituals “are to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable. They even make it accessible, like a house.”
Starbook
by Ben Okri
Okri’s storytelling fuses the ancient and the contemporary so effortlessly that you can’t quite tell whether it is science fiction or age-old saga. In this speculative fable of initiation, Okri depicts an African prince becoming a master artist and learning that “works of art could not be understood.” And, if someone presumes to understand what an art work is about, “its magic is dimmed, not in the work, but in the person seeking to understand.” The magic act of Okri’s writing is his ability to maintain ambiguity while always keeping his language limpid and direct. The central love story in “Starbook” also culminates in an ecstasy that comes as close to the heights of “Tristan” as any contemporary novel I’ve read: “All love must lead to death. And out of this death a new man or new woman is born.”
