Operatic Flying Circus
Since my daughter's dissertation topic for next academic year is something along the lines of 'artists who have designed for theatre', we are going to an ENO Screen live screening of this tomorrow evening:
This production of the opera Benvenuto Cellini composed by Hector Berlioz has been designed by artist and film maker Terry Gilliam of Monty Python's Flying Circus fame http://www.eno.org/cellini who has a previous, successfully received, production of The Damnation of Faust (also by Berlioz) under his belt.
Like Gilliam himself, I read Benvenuto Cellini's very lively autobiography decades ago, in my case whilst studying Renaissance period art history at school. The opera is very loosely based on certain incidents in the artist's extraordinary life. As I recall, Cellini was a man who got into all sorts of trouble in his personal life, and was constantly on the move between Italian city states and France to avoid repercussions with the law. He was spared lethal justice several times only thanks to his various wealthy patrons, including The Pope himself. And yet his creative work - often exquisite castings in gold and silver - is revered to this day.
It is probably fortunate that the visual impressions of the production I have gleaned so far, from the various promotional material available, indicate very busy and exciting staging including circus acts and pyrotechnics, because neither daughter nor myself have any former acquaintance with the score - and the opus is about three hours long. Could be a bit bewildering and bum numbing without great visual stimulus. And whilst obviously it would be preferable in every way (except financially!) to experience the production live at the London Coliseum, this way we can sample the goods cheaply and conveniently closer to home. I just hope that we do, in fact, find that we enjoy the music...
My son is, of course, a huge fan of Terry Gilliam for his humorous, paper cut-out, stop motion animations - a style that he emulated during one of his school art projects several years ago. But attending an opera as background research is a devotion too far for him at this point in his development. :-)
Click to viewThis production of the opera Benvenuto Cellini composed by Hector Berlioz has been designed by artist and film maker Terry Gilliam of Monty Python's Flying Circus fame http://www.eno.org/cellini who has a previous, successfully received, production of The Damnation of Faust (also by Berlioz) under his belt.
Like Gilliam himself, I read Benvenuto Cellini's very lively autobiography decades ago, in my case whilst studying Renaissance period art history at school. The opera is very loosely based on certain incidents in the artist's extraordinary life. As I recall, Cellini was a man who got into all sorts of trouble in his personal life, and was constantly on the move between Italian city states and France to avoid repercussions with the law. He was spared lethal justice several times only thanks to his various wealthy patrons, including The Pope himself. And yet his creative work - often exquisite castings in gold and silver - is revered to this day.
It is probably fortunate that the visual impressions of the production I have gleaned so far, from the various promotional material available, indicate very busy and exciting staging including circus acts and pyrotechnics, because neither daughter nor myself have any former acquaintance with the score - and the opus is about three hours long. Could be a bit bewildering and bum numbing without great visual stimulus. And whilst obviously it would be preferable in every way (except financially!) to experience the production live at the London Coliseum, this way we can sample the goods cheaply and conveniently closer to home. I just hope that we do, in fact, find that we enjoy the music...
My son is, of course, a huge fan of Terry Gilliam for his humorous, paper cut-out, stop motion animations - a style that he emulated during one of his school art projects several years ago. But attending an opera as background research is a devotion too far for him at this point in his development. :-)