Regietheater

Regietheater (German: [ʁeˈʒiːteˌaːtɐ] ⓘ; German for director's theater) is the modern practice of allowing a director freedom in devising the way a given opera or play is staged so that the creator's original, specific intentions or stage directions (where supplied) can be changed, together with major elements of geographical location, chronological situation, casting and plot.

In practice this would mean, for example, that the opening act of Die Walküre (the second work of the Ring Cycle), specifically described as set in Hunding's forest hut, was presented on a stage shaped as a large, sloping disc: no hut was either seen or implied, and the composer's many detailed instructions relating to the actions of Wehwalt, Sieglinde and Hunding within the hut were disregarded because it was said that the details of the scoring meant that they were already illustrated musically.

Examples Supporters of Regietheater hold that works from earlier centuries not only permit but even demand to be re-invented in ways that not only fit contemporary intellectual fashion but even strive to connect them with situations and locations of which the original composers and librettists could not have conceived, thus setting the story into a context the contemporary audience can relate to.

In recent years, the appointment of "celebrity" directors (often from film or other branches of theatre), who do not appear to have learned the specific requirements of opera direction[citation needed] including, in some cases, those who have flaunted their inability to read music,[citation needed] and who seem to be unable to psychologically direct singers behind unreflected Regietheater clichés (often involving gratuitous shock elements), has led to a general misapprehension of the Regietheater term by both theatres and critics.

Opponents accuse such producers of shallowness, crudity, sensationalism, lack of real creativity, insensitivity to the richness of the original setting, neglect of the role played by the music, and pandering to the appetites of ephemeral journalism.