When Can Art Be Tinkered With?

Or is there such a thing as a definitive version in art?

Rossini would lift music from his less-popular operas and throw them in his overtures for pieces such as Il Barbier de Seville. Mozart wrote different arias for Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, depending on who was singing the roles.¹ Back then, there was no such thing as a definitive version of a work. You created for the event and for the people you had, much like how two versions of Shakespeare’s Othello exist, but only one contains the Willow Song.

That began to change in the late Romantic Era, but even then, music or operas that were thought too long or too complicated had alternate cut versions published, approved by the original composers. In a different way, if you look at books published in the 1800s, sometimes what appeared in print was different than the serialized version. Even now, works for the stage are sometimes tweaked for modern-day consumption, and no inhibition seems to be on directors who radically rework the staging of classics.

So performance art has a history of being adapted to suit the occasion, the time period, and the performers. But what about other forms of expression?