Artists
Romeo Castellucci (Creative artist)
Romeo Castellucci | A serious man
02/02/2011
We caught up with Romeo in cyber-space somewhere between Italy and Belgium after one of his stays in Brussels. His stage-production of Wagner’s Parsifal was premiered in January 2001 at the La Monnaie Opera House to great critical acclaim.
Romeo Castellucci talked to us about Parsifal, Heaven and Hell. He’s a man of few words. Sometimes it’s the poet who answers, other times it’s the philosopher but he doesn’t usually dodge questions and gets straight to the point. He talks about music and his fears.
He explains patiently that “understanding is a blatant non-issue” and he owns up to being afraid of lack of time and complexity of technique …
Ruth Prieto, for Composer Speaks, interviews creator and stage director Romeo Castellucci
February 2011
A serious man
1. Ruth Prieto: Now that Parsifal is over, could you tell me what stage directors and musical directors talk about?
Romeo Castellucci: They don’t talk much: technical things … nothing important. But that’s fine. It’s good that they don’t talk much. Each has his own problems and these problems occasionally overlap, but that’s all.
2. Ruth Prieto: When was the last time that music gave you a moment of happiness? And can you point to any moments of happiness during Parsifal. What about moments of unhappiness (please don’t say la foule because I was there)?
Romeo Castellucci: Music is the “night of the world”, to quote the philosopher (G.W.F.H), because it excludes reason. Whenever I’m not thinking, or at least whenever it seems to me that I’m not thinking, I’m happy. Music has huge power over me in terms of “making me not think”.
3. Ruth Prieto: Being Italian and having just done Parsifal, don’t you now feel like directing an opera by Verdi or Puccini?
Romeo Castellucci: I’ve no intention of directing Italian operas except Monteverdi … but his weren’t exactly “operas”.
4. Ruth Prieto: Who complained most during the creation of Parsifal: the dog, la foule, the conductor or the singers?
Romeo Castellucci: The conductor, I think … a bit
5. Ruth Prieto: After seeing you handle a snake, a dog and 300 amateur extras on stage, I think that you’re very brave but what, if anything, is Romeo Castellucci frightened of?
Romeo Castellucci: I’ve always been afraid of the combination “lack of time” and “complexity of technique”. Lack of time and lots of technique can be an explosive tandem. This is the big defect of the world of opera in general.
6. Ruth Prieto: After seeing Parsifal, my 12-year-old daughter Claudia said that she had not understood everything but had been fascinated nonetheless. Is aesthetic enjoyment really possible without understanding of all the elements?
Romeo Castellucci: Understanding is a blatant non-issue. The fact of the matter is that you always understand everything even when you think you don’t and even when you’re completely turned off by the work. The spectator is a whole body, not just a brain. Some emotions escape the logic of reason.
7. Ruth Prieto: How important is it for a stage director in the 21st century to bring contemporary theatre and opera together?
Romeo Castellucci: It’s not important for me. I’m not on a mission. Opera uses different techniques and has a different philosophy but it’s still theatre. Working on an opera is exactly the same thing as working on a theatrical production: in both cases it’s about bringing drama to an audience. The difference with opera is that somebody else has already “been there” and “done it” before you. This is something that you have to think about very carefully if you want to turn it into something genuinely yours.
8. Ruth Prieto: Have you ever been tempted to write an opera libretto?
Romeo Castellucci: No, never.
9. Ruth Prieto: This virtual space is called “Composer Speaks”. Is there an element of composer in a stage director?
Romeo Castellucci: Yes, always.
10. Ruth Prieto: Which composer (or musician) would you invite into Hell and which would you invite into Heaven?
Romeo Castellucci: For an artist, Hell and Heaven are one in the same. I would take somebody from the land of the living, somebody able to transform hell into paradise and paradise into hell. I would take my friend Scott Gibbons (a musician from Chicago who’s been working with me for ten years and who, as far as I’m concerned, is the greatest musician alive).
11. Ruth Prieto: I read in your biography that “during my childhood, not sleeping seemed to me like a gift from God”. What gives you insomnia these days?
Romeo Castellucci: What gives me insomnia these days is the thought of being cast as a villain.
12. Ruth Prieto: I also read “Hell has opened its gates …”. Can they be closed or should we just leave them as they are, wide open?
Romeo Castellucci: The gates of Hell should be open, as indeed they always have been, and it certainly won’t be us who close them. But let’s be clear about things. The Hell that I’m talking about is not so evil. My favorite author (D.F.W.) says that Hell is human relations and affections.
13. Ruth Prieto: In Spain, theatre has been in crisis for ages. How is it doing in Italy?
Romeo Castellucci: In Italy, a cultural catastrophe is in the process of happening. Things are heading towards the point of no return. Italy, for all its sunny character, has become a rather grim, dark and forbidding place.
14. Ruth Prieto: My (piano) pupils sometimes tell me that theatre is a “real drag” (i.e. boring) and an “old people’s thing”. What do we have to do to reach out to young people? What do we have to do to get the “Playstation” generation interested in literature, music and theatre?
Romeo Castellucci: Your pupils are quite right. Theatre is almost always associated with boredom. But they should do it themselves and understand that theatre is actually one of the few remaining spaces where rebellion is still possible … where it’s possible to invent another world, where chaos can be brought to stage.
15. Ruth Prieto: What do the scenic arts contribute to education?
Romeo Castellucci: Aesthetics, which is everything in life.
16. Ruth Prieto: Which characteristic best defines you?
Romeo Castellucci: Dot, dot, dot (…).
17. Ruth Prieto: Have you lost anything along the way?”
Romeo Castellucci: Many things which I’d rather not say.
18. Ruth Prieto: What was it that drove you to becoming a theatrical author?
Romeo Castellucci: I haven’t got a clue. More than likely, a childhood decision or chance.
19. Ruth Prieto: Is it easy to do theatre in a world dying of sadness?
Romeo Castellucci: Yes, it’s easy.
20. Ruth Prieto: Where to you find the strength to overcome the difficulties of such a demanding profession?
Romeo Castellucci: Demanding? It’s a cushy number. These people … artists … they’re lucky. They can get up when they like. They’re privileged. So, there’s no question of fatigue as such. Ours is relative fatigue but light years away from the fatigue felt by a Chinese peasant, for example.
21. Ruth Prieto: What do you find particularly annoying about the world of theatre?
Romeo Castellucci: The same thing as your pupils: institutionalized boredom but also the conviction among those who engage in it that they’re better than everybody else.
22. Ruth Prieto: Have you ever run into censorship problems?
Romeo Castellucci: During the first Berlusconi government, the Italian Ministry of Culture tried to get rid of my theatre company claiming that what I did wasn’t theatre.
23. Ruth Prieto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity … Anything to add?
Romeo Castellucci: In fact, I would delete the bit about fraternity. Why should I be brother to certain faces, certain names? I want to keep my distance from certain people. I’m happy with freedom and equality.
24. Ruth Prieto: Who would you bring back from the past?
Romeo Castellucci: Stefano C. and F Nietzsche.
25. Ruth Prieto: What do you find most interesting about the present?
Romeo Castellucci: A few films, a few writers, a few musicians, a few scientists …
26. Ruth Prieto: What do you expect from the future?
Romeo Castellucci: Nothing. The future is an illusion of hope. And, as a philosopher said, hope is the other face of desperation. We can’t accept one or the other. What matters is the present. The present in its state of constant tension. Everything that happens to all of us happens in the present, right now at this precise moment.
27. Ruth Prieto: Have you got any unfulfilled dreams?
Romeo Castellucci: Surfing
28. Ruth Prieto: ¿What about the Internet and new technologies? Do they turn you on or do they turn you off?
Romeo Castellucci: I use Internet. With indifference. I use new technologies only when they’re useful to me, with indifference.
29. Ruth Prieto: ¿What personality from the world of theatre would you sit down with and talk to for hours on end?
Romeo Castellucci: With that crackpot … him … the one from Marseilles … the one who was called … A.A.
30. Ruth Prieto: A film that you would recommend…
Romeo Castellucci: Maybe two: “A serious man” and “Enter the void”.
31. Ruth Prieto: A book that is a “must”…
Romeo Castellucci: Moby Dick.
32. Ruth Prieto: ¿A song that cheers you up on a bad day?
Romeo Castellucci: Hobo Blues by John Lee Hooker.
33. Ruth Prieto: ¿What is silence in theatre?
Romeo Castellucci: It’s marble, the substance of time, the matter, the original vacuum from which all theatre is born and to which it returns.
34. Ruth Prieto: The titles of your [latest] works are Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Is life closer to Hell or Paradise?
Romeo Castellucci: Hell in the morning, Paradise in the afternoon. Purgatory for Sunday afternoons.
35. Ruth Prieto: ¿What artistic challenge would you like to take on now?
Romeo Castellucci: I can’t tell you but I should. It begins with “C”.
36. Ruth Prieto: One of Romeo’s virtues?
Romeo Castellucci: Very few, hardly any. None
37. Ruth Prieto: One of Castellucci’s defects?
Romeo Castellucci: Humility
38. Ruth Prieto: ¿What would Romeo Castellucci say about Romeo Castellucci?
Romeo Castellucci: It doesn’t happen a lot but now and again this guy knows how to do his job
February 2011
A serious man
1. Ruth Prieto: Now that Parsifal is over, could you tell me what stage directors and musical directors talk about?
Romeo Castellucci: They don’t talk much: technical things … nothing important. But that’s fine. It’s good that they don’t talk much. Each has his own problems and these problems occasionally overlap, but that’s all.
2. Ruth Prieto: When was the last time that music gave you a moment of happiness? And can you point to any moments of happiness during Parsifal. What about moments of unhappiness (please don’t say la foule because I was there)?
Romeo Castellucci: Music is the “night of the world”, to quote the philosopher (G.W.F.H), because it excludes reason. Whenever I’m not thinking, or at least whenever it seems to me that I’m not thinking, I’m happy. Music has huge power over me in terms of “making me not think”.
3. Ruth Prieto: Being Italian and having just done Parsifal, don’t you now feel like directing an opera by Verdi or Puccini?
Romeo Castellucci: I’ve no intention of directing Italian operas except Monteverdi … but his weren’t exactly “operas”.
4. Ruth Prieto: Who complained most during the creation of Parsifal: the dog, la foule, the conductor or the singers?
Romeo Castellucci: The conductor, I think … a bit
5. Ruth Prieto: After seeing you handle a snake, a dog and 300 amateur extras on stage, I think that you’re very brave but what, if anything, is Romeo Castellucci frightened of?
Romeo Castellucci: I’ve always been afraid of the combination “lack of time” and “complexity of technique”. Lack of time and lots of technique can be an explosive tandem. This is the big defect of the world of opera in general.
6. Ruth Prieto: After seeing Parsifal, my 12-year-old daughter Claudia said that she had not understood everything but had been fascinated nonetheless. Is aesthetic enjoyment really possible without understanding of all the elements?
Romeo Castellucci: Understanding is a blatant non-issue. The fact of the matter is that you always understand everything even when you think you don’t and even when you’re completely turned off by the work. The spectator is a whole body, not just a brain. Some emotions escape the logic of reason.
7. Ruth Prieto: How important is it for a stage director in the 21st century to bring contemporary theatre and opera together?
Romeo Castellucci: It’s not important for me. I’m not on a mission. Opera uses different techniques and has a different philosophy but it’s still theatre. Working on an opera is exactly the same thing as working on a theatrical production: in both cases it’s about bringing drama to an audience. The difference with opera is that somebody else has already “been there” and “done it” before you. This is something that you have to think about very carefully if you want to turn it into something genuinely yours.
8. Ruth Prieto: Have you ever been tempted to write an opera libretto?
Romeo Castellucci: No, never.
9. Ruth Prieto: This virtual space is called “Composer Speaks”. Is there an element of composer in a stage director?
Romeo Castellucci: Yes, always.
10. Ruth Prieto: Which composer (or musician) would you invite into Hell and which would you invite into Heaven?
Romeo Castellucci: For an artist, Hell and Heaven are one in the same. I would take somebody from the land of the living, somebody able to transform hell into paradise and paradise into hell. I would take my friend Scott Gibbons (a musician from Chicago who’s been working with me for ten years and who, as far as I’m concerned, is the greatest musician alive).
11. Ruth Prieto: I read in your biography that “during my childhood, not sleeping seemed to me like a gift from God”. What gives you insomnia these days?
Romeo Castellucci: What gives me insomnia these days is the thought of being cast as a villain.
12. Ruth Prieto: I also read “Hell has opened its gates …”. Can they be closed or should we just leave them as they are, wide open?
Romeo Castellucci: The gates of Hell should be open, as indeed they always have been, and it certainly won’t be us who close them. But let’s be clear about things. The Hell that I’m talking about is not so evil. My favorite author (D.F.W.) says that Hell is human relations and affections.
13. Ruth Prieto: In Spain, theatre has been in crisis for ages. How is it doing in Italy?
Romeo Castellucci: In Italy, a cultural catastrophe is in the process of happening. Things are heading towards the point of no return. Italy, for all its sunny character, has become a rather grim, dark and forbidding place.
14. Ruth Prieto: My (piano) pupils sometimes tell me that theatre is a “real drag” (i.e. boring) and an “old people’s thing”. What do we have to do to reach out to young people? What do we have to do to get the “Playstation” generation interested in literature, music and theatre?
Romeo Castellucci: Your pupils are quite right. Theatre is almost always associated with boredom. But they should do it themselves and understand that theatre is actually one of the few remaining spaces where rebellion is still possible … where it’s possible to invent another world, where chaos can be brought to stage.
15. Ruth Prieto: What do the scenic arts contribute to education?
Romeo Castellucci: Aesthetics, which is everything in life.
16. Ruth Prieto: Which characteristic best defines you?
Romeo Castellucci: Dot, dot, dot (…).
17. Ruth Prieto: Have you lost anything along the way?”
Romeo Castellucci: Many things which I’d rather not say.
18. Ruth Prieto: What was it that drove you to becoming a theatrical author?
Romeo Castellucci: I haven’t got a clue. More than likely, a childhood decision or chance.
19. Ruth Prieto: Is it easy to do theatre in a world dying of sadness?
Romeo Castellucci: Yes, it’s easy.
20. Ruth Prieto: Where to you find the strength to overcome the difficulties of such a demanding profession?
Romeo Castellucci: Demanding? It’s a cushy number. These people … artists … they’re lucky. They can get up when they like. They’re privileged. So, there’s no question of fatigue as such. Ours is relative fatigue but light years away from the fatigue felt by a Chinese peasant, for example.
21. Ruth Prieto: What do you find particularly annoying about the world of theatre?
Romeo Castellucci: The same thing as your pupils: institutionalized boredom but also the conviction among those who engage in it that they’re better than everybody else.
22. Ruth Prieto: Have you ever run into censorship problems?
Romeo Castellucci: During the first Berlusconi government, the Italian Ministry of Culture tried to get rid of my theatre company claiming that what I did wasn’t theatre.
23. Ruth Prieto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity … Anything to add?
Romeo Castellucci: In fact, I would delete the bit about fraternity. Why should I be brother to certain faces, certain names? I want to keep my distance from certain people. I’m happy with freedom and equality.
24. Ruth Prieto: Who would you bring back from the past?
Romeo Castellucci: Stefano C. and F Nietzsche.
25. Ruth Prieto: What do you find most interesting about the present?
Romeo Castellucci: A few films, a few writers, a few musicians, a few scientists …
26. Ruth Prieto: What do you expect from the future?
Romeo Castellucci: Nothing. The future is an illusion of hope. And, as a philosopher said, hope is the other face of desperation. We can’t accept one or the other. What matters is the present. The present in its state of constant tension. Everything that happens to all of us happens in the present, right now at this precise moment.
27. Ruth Prieto: Have you got any unfulfilled dreams?
Romeo Castellucci: Surfing
28. Ruth Prieto: ¿What about the Internet and new technologies? Do they turn you on or do they turn you off?
Romeo Castellucci: I use Internet. With indifference. I use new technologies only when they’re useful to me, with indifference.
29. Ruth Prieto: ¿What personality from the world of theatre would you sit down with and talk to for hours on end?
Romeo Castellucci: With that crackpot … him … the one from Marseilles … the one who was called … A.A.
30. Ruth Prieto: A film that you would recommend…
Romeo Castellucci: Maybe two: “A serious man” and “Enter the void”.
31. Ruth Prieto: A book that is a “must”…
Romeo Castellucci: Moby Dick.
32. Ruth Prieto: ¿A song that cheers you up on a bad day?
Romeo Castellucci: Hobo Blues by John Lee Hooker.
33. Ruth Prieto: ¿What is silence in theatre?
Romeo Castellucci: It’s marble, the substance of time, the matter, the original vacuum from which all theatre is born and to which it returns.
34. Ruth Prieto: The titles of your [latest] works are Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Is life closer to Hell or Paradise?
Romeo Castellucci: Hell in the morning, Paradise in the afternoon. Purgatory for Sunday afternoons.
35. Ruth Prieto: ¿What artistic challenge would you like to take on now?
Romeo Castellucci: I can’t tell you but I should. It begins with “C”.
36. Ruth Prieto: One of Romeo’s virtues?
Romeo Castellucci: Very few, hardly any. None
37. Ruth Prieto: One of Castellucci’s defects?
Romeo Castellucci: Humility
38. Ruth Prieto: ¿What would Romeo Castellucci say about Romeo Castellucci?
Romeo Castellucci: It doesn’t happen a lot but now and again this guy knows how to do his job
