Once upon a time it was enough for opera singers to plant their feet squarely on stage, with arms akimbo and mouths open wide, emitting glorious sounds. Now they're expected to be able to act as well; to shimmy convincingly around the stage and still be heard over the orchestra. Lately their life has become more complicated still: they are in danger of being upstaged by the sets.
At a recent English National Opera production of The Flying Dutchman, the principal singers were required to deliver their arias while scrambling through the webbing of a vast, tilting canopy which engulfed the stage. The same company's 1990 production of Verdi's Macbeth had Lady Macbeth lying face-down on a hammock suspended from the rafters, as she tried to give full vent to her murderous thoughts. Yet, while the balance between the visual, musical and dramatic elements of an opera performance can certainly get out of kilter, with fussy or gimmicky designs overshadowing the singing, it's clear that stage design has a strong claim on audience attention and is, for many opera-goers, a huge attraction.
The possibilities for striking visual conceits and innovative settings for opera were rediscovered in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a generation of talented young designers - particularly in East Germany and Austria - with backgrounds in architecture, interior design, photography and film, turned their attention to an art form that many had considered mummified, or faintly ludicrous.
Bruno Schwengl, the designer of Opera Ireland's two new productions at the Gaiety, The Merry Widow and Eugene Onegin, has designed sets for Wexford Festival Opera and the Gate Theatre. As a graphic design student in his native Salzburg in the 1970s, immersed in the exploding area of zappy advertising, poster and record-cover design, he had no interest whatsoever in theatre ("tacky, so tacky"), particularly not in opera. A dramatic conversion ensued, after some exposure to the annual Salzburg opera festival; soon Schwengl was in the grip of "an addiction". He trained in set and costume design and began to work as an assistant at the festival. A decade of working all over the world ensued, as assistant to a range of designers, while he made contacts with the new wave of directors in theatre and opera.
"It was a passion for me then. For opera designers your passion can be either the music, the drama or simply design itself. I worked and worked and worked. You have to be driven when you start out." Schwengl still appears to be somewhat driven. "You know, if you're not one of the very, very best, it's no fun. So you have to keep working. You need the right personality and the nerve to go through your disasters and to keep pushing yourself. It takes guts." A shrug, then an accusing stare: "And intelligence."
"When you approach an opera for the first time, you have to think like a butcher, or a surgeon." Schwengl spends periods locked in his Salzburg apartment, with the answering machine switched on, while he immerses himself in the score and libretto. "You must select the best moment, the most stunning scene or the strongest dramatic encounter. This becomes the heart of the piece, in design terms. Otherwise it all gets too complicated and the impact is diluted. You want the audience to come out in goose pimples."
In The Merry Widow - Franz Lehar's perennially popular operetta set in turn-of-the-century Paris - that pivotal scene is the arrival of Hanna (the widow, sung by Alwyn Mellor) at a riotous party in Maxims nightclub. As Schwengl's set aims to maximise all available space, extending to the back wall of the theatre, the widow will enter through the back door from the street, where she has been waiting with her carriage.
"The set is extremely stylised and very dark," says Schwengl. "The Belle Epoque is ending and it's all slightly exaggerated. I have used hundreds of yards of deep blue silk, strewn with a few pieces of antique furniture, a gold Eiffel Tower, a Faberge egg - and I've used a real carriage for the widow."
For Tchaikovsky's restrained study of love and renunciation, Eugene Onegin - based on Pushkin's poem - the sets are white, the spaces austere and stylised, and the costumes are in period (late 19th century). "The stage is very empty. I have added a few realistic pieces such as real birch trees and long tables groaning with Russian food. You also need something great to look at, so I'm using a huge painting of St Petersburg as a backdrop."
These productions are Schwengl's 11th and 12th in Ireland, and he has worked with Dieter Kaige, the Swiss-born artistic director of Opera Ireland, umpteen times in Europe and the US. For Schwengl, it is essential that the performing arts are international, that there is "a flow of creativity" between countries. "Otherwise, it all becomes so provincial. "Without money, this is difficult of course. Record companies, with their huge profits and their inflated fees for singers, need to realise that the opera houses, the theatres and concert halls are supplying the next generation of performers. They must plough some of the money back into the performing arts. It should be their moral duty.
"It is sad how little opera there is in Ireland, but there is no tradition of it here, and no money. What would be possible, perhaps, would be to convert the Gaiety into a musical theatre, with, say, a six-month opera season, three months of ballet, and some Irish theatre or musicals the rest of the year.
Lack of money can become an easy complaint or excuse, however, and Schwengl admits that with a little imagination, a lot can be done even in the constrained conditions of small stages and low budgets. "If you have a tight budget, as is the case here, you must have a good idea, so that the audience doesn't notice. I always go for beauty, for scale or for gorgeous colours. But it's not enough just to care about how chic the design is. The design must convey a sense of the erotic, of time passing, of mystery, of love and death. There needs to be an element of enigma; you don't explain everything." Another shrug and a sharp glance: "I always try to look towards the 10 per cent of the audience who are very intelligent." Let's hope we're all up to the challenge.
The Merry Widow opens tonight at The Gaiety at 7.30 p.m.; Eugene Onegin opens on Thursday, November 30th, at 7.30 p.m. Booking on: (01) 453 5519.
