Modernizations of Operas

Since many operas were composed in cultural contexts that may no longer exist today, the best method of reviving these operas is to modernize them. Or is it?

To modernize or not to modernize, that is the question an opera director must often face. A thoughtful modernization can enhance the original meaning of the storyline, making it relevant to contemporary issues. A sloppy modernization, however, aimed at being hip merely for the sake of appealing to a larger audience, can turn an opera into a monstrosity few people will enjoy. The key to a successful modernization is to translate the original story by finding parallel situations in the current cultural context. So for example, rather than throwing an opera such as Marriage of Figaro into the 1950s simply because the costume designer wants to put all the females in poodle skirts and bobby socks, a director might consider parallel issues that are raised in the opera and choose a time period accordingly. Since the issue of class equality is a dominant theme in Marriage of Figaro, setting the opera in the 1960s in order to deal with the Civil Rights movement could be one example of opera "translation." Good modernization, then, involves looking at the opera first and subsequently choosing a contemporary era that fits the storyline, rather than first choosing an era and trying to smash the opera's storyline into it.

Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story is an excellent modernization of Romeo and Juliet, able to stand on its own even if one was unfamiliar with Shakespeare's play.