Performing and Exposure

There's an article on Ian Bostridge - the tenor - in today's Guardian. It's all worth reading but the last lines struck me:

It's[Britten's Death in Venice] essentially about the loss of dignity of the artist. Aschenbach wants to be a grand person in grand clothes with a grand reputation, but that has cut off the sources of his creativity. What we have to do is essentially and necessarily undignified and exposing. As a performer you are mining bits of yourself in a way that is endlessly potentially humiliating. It's enormously satisfying. But you do tread a fine line."

Art and performing has to possess you (and maybe that an appropriate word in view of Bostridge's PhD), it can't be arm's length.