Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging
Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up the
sense of scale that was part of grand opéra’s appeal and raison d’être? Take
away the special effects, whip away the phantasmagorical curtain, and, as with
any Hollywood blockbuster, you are left with a modest little plot whirring away
at its centre. In Tell, this involves the love between Arnold and Mathilde
across a national divide. It’s the struggle of the Swiss — in a time before
neutrality and cuckoo clocks — against their Austrian oppressors that, along
with the Alps, forms the backdrop.
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