Table Of ContentRevised Pages
The Passions of Peter Sellars
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The Passions of Peter Sellars
Staging the Music
Susan McClary
University of Michigan Press • Ann Arbor
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Copyright © 2019 by Susan McClary
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid- free paper
First published January 2019
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: McClary, Susan, author.
Title: The passions of Peter Sellars : staging the music / Susan McClary.
Description: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. |
Identifiers: lccn 2018027556 (print) | lccn 2018028800 (ebook) | isbn
9780472124794 (E- book) | isbn 9780472131228 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Sellars, Peter— Criticism and interpretation. | Opera— Production
and direction— History— 20th century.
Classification: LCC ml429.s415 (ebook) | LCC ml429.s415 m33 2019
(print) | DDC 792.502/33092— dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027556
The University of Michigan Press gratefully acknowledges the Case Western Reserve
University Department of Music’s generous support of this publication.
Cover photograph of Peter Sellars, © Ruth Waltz.
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Acknowledgments
I never imagined myself writing such a book. Indeed, I thought I had fin-
ished with the ordeal of writing books of any kind. But this one was thrust
upon me, and I should identify some of the culprits.
My colleagues at the University of Toronto— Sherry Lee, Linda Hutch-
eon, Caryl Clark— invited me repeatedly to speak before productions of the
Canadian Opera Company, beginning with a production in 2012 of Kaija
Saariaho’s L’amour de loin. When I happened to be in town in 2013 for a doc-
toral oral, they happily included me in the entourage trucking off to see The
Tristan Project by Sellars and Bill Viola. Whether or not they intended to
serve as matchmakers, my Toronto friends pushed me into Sellars’s proximity
enough times that the contagion took.
At a party hosted by Linda and Michael Hutcheon following the Tristan
performance, I engaged in a long boozy conversation with Vicki Cooper,
then acquisitions editor at Cambridge University Press. When I wondered
out loud to her why no one had written a book on Sellars, she suggested that
I take on the task. I toyed with the idea for a while, but the project did not
yet catch fire. That occurred only after I participated in a day- long session
with Sellars in Toronto in conjunction with his 2014 production of Handel’s
Hercules. Over the course of that day we became fast friends, so much so that
I seem to have known him forever, and the writing of this book became a
necessity.
I have been aided by my many students at Case Western Reserve Univer-
sity who have taken my “Opera after Einstein” seminar. Together we have
explored a wide range of new music theater works, including those by John
Adams and Kaija Saariaho in which Sellars served as collaborator, and we
have worked to develop a vocabulary for analyzing relationships between
sound and motion, opera and ideology. Conversations with Nicholas Ste-
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vi • Acknowledgments
vens, Sophie Benn, Kate Doyle, Alex Lawler, Dan Batchelder, Maria Parrini,
April Sun, Brian Stuligross, and Taylor McClaskie have proved especially
stimulating. I went into musicology because I love to teach, and all my ideas
come from interactions in the classroom. More so than any of my other pub-
lications, this one represents a group effort.
At Case Western Reserve University I have not only spectacular students
but also the most supportive colleagues one could ever hope to have. Particu-
larly precious to me is the group of women— Georgia Cowart, Francesca
Brittan, Kate Doyle, Kathleen Horvath, Julie Andrijeski, Debra Nagy, Judy
Bundra— with whom I can share both the tribulations and joys of teaching
and academic life. Magnificent scholars and musicians, as well as resourceful
cooks, they have rallied around me in times of need. I also count among my
departmental angels my chair, David Rothenberg, who manages to maintain
a level of morale exceedingly rare among music programs.
I am grateful to my long- time editor, Mary Francis, who gave invaluable
feedback as I wrote. I followed Mary from University of California Press to
her new post at University of Michigan Press because I have such faith in her
judgments. I must also thank Dr. Nathan Mesko and Dr. Jacob Scott who
saved my life when I was in the final throes of producing this book.
My husband, Robert Walser, has helped in countless ways as I pursued
this and all my other projects; the range of my intellectual pursuits owes ev-
erything to him and his encouragement. Over the course of our more than
thirty years together, we have visited and established connections on every
continent save Antarctica, which has not yet caught on to New Musicology.
I drafted much of this book in Sitges, Catalunya: our chosen paradise.
Most of all, however, I am indebted to Peter himself: for his fascinating
work, for his endless generosity, for his extraordinary humaneness. It is hard
to know Peter and not adore him. I can dedicate this book to no one other
than its subject, the inimitable Peter Sellars.
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Contents
Introduction: Who Is Peter Sellars? 1
1 • American Mozart 11
2 • Ritualizing: Saint François and Theodora 37
3 • Inventing New Operas:
Collaborations with John Adams, Part I 61
4 • A Libretto of One’s Own:
Collaborations with John Adams, Part II 87
5 • Spectral Sensualities:
Collaborations with Kaija Saariaho 115
6 • Peter Sellars’s Mayan Passion 143
7 • Back to the Source: The Bach Passions 163
Notes 193
Index 211
Digital materials related to this title can be found on
the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL:
https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10023187
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Introduction
Who Is Peter Sellars?
In 1988, Peter Sellars stunned the opera world when he staged Mozart’s Le
nozze di Figaro in the Trump Tower, with the philandering Count Almaviva
implicitly as Donald himself. Many critics saw this affront as just one more
example of Sellars’s penchant for playing classic works for laughs: the topical-
ity of Donald Trump in this production seemed to operate as a piece with
other contemporary references, such as the branded cleaning products lined
up in the room of Almaviva’s servants, Susanna and Figaro.
The 2016 presidential election, however, incited a plethora of opera stag-
ings that alluded to Trump, suggesting that we revisit Sellars’s prescient pro-
duction of 1988.1 As Sellars explained tirelessly at the time, his decision to set
Mozart’s masterwork in present- day Manhattan emerged from his unswerv-
ing commitment to translating the volatile class and gender tensions of Beau-
marchais’s revolutionary (and censored) play into a North American con-
text. In breaking Figaro out of the quaint, comfortable, white- wigged past, he
intended to alert us to present dangers already lying right on our doorstep
thirty years ago.
But a great many viewers saw Sellars’s Trump as a joke— an insider joke at
best, for few outside New York City at the time knew about Trump’s business
machinations, his documented brutality toward women, his loudly trum-
peted ambition to become president. Indeed, when I first started drafting
this book in 2015, I considered it necessary to explain who Trump was; I re-
vised that section a bit in mid- 2016 when he became the unlikely Republican
nominee for president, still little more than fodder for punch lines on late
night talk shows. I could never have imagined that events would eventually
push this discussion to my opening paragraphs. As it turns out, the joke was
on us. We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Peter Sellars has been directing operas professionally for nearly forty
