The Seven Deadly Sins (Opera Ballet)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: D     Program: C

 

 

Taped in the older analog High Definition format in 1993, The Orchestra of the Lyon Opera presents Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petty Bourgeoisie (1933), but here is presented by theater director Peter Sellars as a tired, stereotypical attack on the United States.  Both it and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny were set in a version of America then, while Sellars mixes stage footage with footage of the real U.S. in the early 1990s.

 

Of course, the original play arrived as the Nazi’s rose, and the only “bourgeoisie” to attack then were the Jews who where shipped off to concentration camps.  However, the United States is now the great Satan to the likes of Sellars and his Seven Deadly Sins is supposedly making the “big statement” about events in the U.S. at the time.  After 9/11 and plenty of atrocities overseas, this ballet holds even less water that ever.  It is very convenient how Old Europe at its worse is ignored then and now, but let’s pretend to agree for a moment.

 

The U.S. is not above question, as Vietnam alone has proven, but this interpretation happened as the senior George Bush was president and Clinton had just succeeded him.  The singers/dancers have some talent, but it is not as if this were a work that offered great challenges.  Are the potentials for “sin” greater in a country of more wealth?  No, only the extent of which those sins are carried through, as the Axis Powers proved.  Many want to defend such a work shallowly, saying “it’s art!” or “aren’t they entitled to their opinion”.  The former is questionable; especially being several generations form the original source, while the latter is as true for them as anyone (including this writer).

 

Running 47 minutes, it eventually becomes a broken record of “you American’s are such Pigs!” that you can see for free on Fox News (or CNN & MSNBC) 24-hours-a-day in their overseas reports.  Another thing is how self-impressed Sellars and company are with themselves, which is bared-out with the way the program was recorded.

 

This is one of those rare programs shot in analog High Definition videotape, before the digital versions arrived.  It just adds to the pretension as if the videographers were actually doing something visually innovate with the recorded images.  This is made more difficult on their part by obvious stage performances and the one built in feature they seemed to forget about Brecht:  he was a deconstructionist!!!

 

This is not as if ignorance ever stopped people like this before, but the other issue here is that of trying to speak through other’s words.  This fails here as well.  There is not one original thought here, nor does the production have the guts to present one.  Julie Taymor showed how this is possible with her film of Shakespeare’s Titus in 1999.  Sellars cannot tell us Karl Marx said it all, without sounding like Harpo Marx, but unfunny, all music, no words and absolutely no charm and little talent.

 

As for the quality of that older HDTV, you can tell how good it might have looked for its time, but some of the outdoor footage is not as good, and the non-anamorphic 1.78 X 1 image is surprisingly soft.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo does decode into Pro Logic, but it is lite.  There are no extras, possibly because Sellars thinks he is the extra.

 

If you want to see something about a Brecht work, you are better off getting a book, seeing it live, or waiting for another DVD.  Is it possible David Fincher has a clearer understanding of this work?

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo