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 To be seen at the first full staging of composer John Adams's
"The Gospel According to the Other Mary" at the English National
Opera on Friday, it's an image of intense suffering.
But Sellars says the intent is to evoke labour pains -
life-giving rather than death.
As the woman suffers, Sellars's libretto describes the pain of
giving birth.
"It feels like the end of the world, but what you're actually
doing is giving birth, so what looks like the worst times are in
fact the beginning of the birth of a new era, and we always
forget that," he told Reuters.
Sellars, 57, once considered the bad boy of opera for works like
his 1980 setting of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" in the underworld of
New York's Harlem, has been involved in plenty of provocative
productions in his time.
He did the original staging in 1991 of fellow American Adams's
"The Death of Klinghoffer", based on a true story of a crippled
Jewish man who was killed and thrown overboard from a cruise
ship hijacked by Palestinians.
A revival in a new production last month brought out protesters
at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City who claimed the work
was anti-Semitic - which Sellars denies.
"The 'Klinghoffer' thing was absolutely quite cynically targeted
by a group of people who couldn't care less about opera and
didn't even know the piece," Sellars said, noting that in his
view the protest had backfired.
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"It's a cheap stab at censorship, and of course as always in the
history of art anytime anyone tries that, all you do is create
triple the publicity and so what was great was that a little opera
is suddenly being discussed everywhere.
"So we have to thank them for their cupidity," he said with a laugh.
Sellars isn't expecting a repeat of a Klinghoffer-like row over
"Gospel", although the piece departs from the usual Passion plays
about the death of Jesus to emphasise the role of women, Mary
Magdalene and her sister Martha, in Jesus's life.
It depicts the passion "in the eyes and words of the women who were
there with Jesus and whose home he was staying in for the last two
weeks of his life, so it became very personal and very private",
Sellars said.
Like Klinghoffer, or one of Adams's other operas, "Nixon in China",
"Gospel" is "another side of a story that obviously is quite public
and it's one of those interesting things because it's what John
always hopes for in his pieces", Sellars said.
"You already know the story, which is how most classic operas
worked. You came in and the audience completely knew the story so
therefore what was interesting was how it was being treated this
time around, and what would be the points of reference - and that's
marvellous."
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
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