Rockin' the (opera) house

Sir Jonathan Miller has the kind of résumé that makes you feel rather humble: opera director, author, lecturer, television producer, theater and film director, sculptor and neurologist.

Lean and craggy, blunt and funny, Miller is in town to direct Seattle Opera's upcoming production of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte," which he has transposed to 2006 and dressed up his protagonists as rock stars. It's an update of a production created 11 years ago for London's Royal Opera at Covent Garden, restaged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Mostly Mozart Festival. The show also marks Miller's debut at Seattle Opera (though his "Eugene Onegin" was seen here in 2002, he wasn't here to direct it).

Over a quick lunch between rehearsals, Miller responded graciously to questions, coming up with his own unique answers. Here goes:

Q: So do we call you "Sir Jonathan"?

A: Heavens, no. Call me Jonathan. My wife wanted me to refuse the honor because she hates being called "Lady Miller." But I've been working for 45 years, and I've done more than anyone else, and I thought I may as well accept. Using the "Sir Jonathan" is really rather common. Ben Kingsley insists on being called "Sir Ben," but that's because he's a little twerp.

Q: You take a rather dark view of "Cosi fan tutte" (in which the two heroines fall for each other's sweethearts when the guys romance them under concealed identities, as the result of a cynical wager). Isn't there supposed to be a happy ending, in which the original lovers reunite when all is explained?

A: That's a sentimental cliché, that they go back to their first lovers. But everyone has betrayed everyone else. By the end of the opera, they can't stand each other. The opera really is about the dangers of pretending. It's not about fidelity, as everyone seems to think; it's about identity and what happens when you put on a disguise.

Q: Please explain.

A: I was influenced by a novel by my mother (Betty Spiro Miller), who wrote about being an officer's wife in wartime. She found that when men wore uniforms, they behaved quite differently from the way they would act in civilian dress. This is also the case in "Cosi," when the young men disguise themselves — as rock stars, in this production. They become different people.

Q: So "you are what you wear"?

A: No, but you can become a different version of yourself. This happens at masked balls, in which people misbehave, believing that their costumes allow them to be someone else.

I directed a play 25 years ago in Los Angeles and came back wearing beads. My children were appalled. I bounced right back to my Brooks Brothers mentality. I've been wearing almost exactly the same clothes for 50 years.

Q: You were at Cambridge in an amazing time, when you went on to create the satirical revue "Beyond the Fringe" with fellow students Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, all brilliant comedians. Wasn't it terrific fun, rousting about with these fellows?

A: No indeed. It was about 90 percent no rousting about. Usually I was in a laboratory with my hands reeking of human fat. I'm a doctor, a neurologist; I practiced medicine for a short time. Yes, I appeared in a show now and then, but I did my labs and physiology. I also was a member of a society called the Apostles, probably best known because another member was Anthony Blunt [a famous spy who worked for the Soviet Union in the 1930s and '40s].

Q: How did you learn to be a theater and opera director?

A: You keep your eyes open and see what people do. I had no acquaintance with opera, so there were no restraints. The whole idea of a special directing course is mad. There are many crackpot theories about, and the theater is rotten with idiotic pretensions, shtick and silly ideas.

There are certain things you can learn, like how to face upstage, but most of it is just common sense. Most of my stage directions are met with "Yes, of course" by the actors and singers, because they are logical. Just as in medicine, you notice the tiny little details of behavior and what they tell you about people.

Q: Do you often update historic operas, as you are doing with "Cosi"?

A: Not when the opera is really tied to its period. But I have updated everything from "Rigoletto" to "The Mikado." The former has been running for 27 years at the English National Opera, and the latter has been around for 20 years, which is a vindication.

Q: What do you think about the productions of Peter Sellars and other contemporary innovators who transpose operas to a new period to fit a concept?

A: I was at Cambridge when DNA was invented. I grew up with real concepts. A lot of theater concepts are laughable; they're rubbish. What counts is getting human behavior right, all the tiny, negligible details of speech and gesture. I can't bear pretentious [bull]; if I see another row of TV monitors on an opera stage ...

Q: What about some avant-garde opera productions in which the intentions of the stage director are deliberately not very clear?

A: Unintelligibility is unforgivable. The greatest works are clearer and simpler. I'm re-reading "Anna Karenina" now, and I'm struck by how clear everything is.

Q: Were your parents disappointed when you went into the theater instead of practicing medicine?

A: They were not nearly so disappointed as I was. It was sort of like the Vietnam War, which started as a minor involvement and then escalated. I was a young, penniless intern, and I drifted out of practice and into something quite different. Now, I feel a deep, inconsolable remorse for having gotten into it. I should be doing biological science, neurology.

Q: Do you like going to the opera?

A: I've got better things to do. I don't want to twitch around in the lobby at intermissions and stay out late. I have too many unfinished books to write.

I'm an abstract formalist sculptor, too, working in metal, wood, paper, cloth. I'm curating an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum (in London) on the history of camouflage.

I'm 72 now, near the end of my career, and there is a great deal left to do.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com