Something that needs to be said loud and clear about bringing stage and film directors to the Met Opera: It’s not a new idea. Back in the 1950s, Met artistic director Rudolf Bing recruited Broadway star actor and director Alfred Lunt; while Margaret Webster, one of that era’s most noted Shakesperean directors, writes about directing the Met’s Aida and Simon Boccanegra in her highly readable memoir, Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage.
And what about Visconti directing Callas at La Scala during these same years?
Hey, and what about the trailblazing Russian director Vsevolold Meyerhold, directing opera at the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg/Petrograd in the 1910s and ’20s?