As a child I had a toy
theatre; I haven't given up on the idea and this photograph shows the proscenium
of one of my recent theatres, with a model for the first act of "The Adventures
of Mr Brouček". Theatre
As a child I had a toy
theatre; I haven't given up on the idea and this photograph shows the proscenium
of one of my recent theatres, with a model for the first act of "The Adventures
of Mr Brouček".
Other than Folie Tristan, which was produced at the Opéra Péniche in Paris in 1996, the following are all projects to keep me happy. Earlier productions — "A Celebration of Wit, Humour & Comedy" in Monte Carlo in 1994, "Façade" at the Royal Museum of Scotland in 1999 and "Bastien & Bastienne" in Cambridge in 1979 — will be added later.
CONTENTS
Folie Tristan
an adaptation by Max Charruyer
of texts and music by Wagner, Nietzsche and Ludwig II
This production brought together words from Wagner's sources as well as words he influenced; his music from before and from Tristan und Isolde; sung to the accompaniment of a piano — and all staged in a barge on the ever so slightly lapping water of the Seine.
The central image was a very long cloth, a sail which served intermittantly as the curtain that shields Isolde from Tristan, the prison Ludwig II tangles for himself from his mad thoughts, and the form of the ship that seems to take Isolde off in her final Transformation... The side walls of the barge were painted in motifs that chaged sense according to the coloured lighting.
The vessel to be seen in the very foreground alludes to the cup the lovers drink from, in the form of a grail...
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| So sittsam... | Mild und leise... |
Der Rosenkavalier
opera by Richard Strauss
Perhaps my most elaborately worked out model is of the first act of Der Rosenkavalier.
The Marschallin's bedroom is made of panels, somesuspended and some constructs, all splayed in shapes that defeat all perspective (and thus work from all seats in the house...) decorated in a curly, fanciful manner, taking, if you like, from Dufy what Dufy takes from the 18th Century... There are no right angles.
These pastel colours are all the while worked on by the lighting and the daybreak is also achieved solely by slightly opening the window panel and allowing it to reflect into the stage area a strong white light from behind the scenery and below.
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The scenes shown below give:
the Marschallin alone...
the Baron's entrance...
daybreak interrupting the
lovers...
Below you can see how the shapes & spaces would work from the gods, an aspect of design I have learned to be important:
Act II I made a much simpler undecorated model of the shapes & spaces for Act II; the two fireplaces are on each extreme of the set and the anchor-like shape coming from the ceiling would be drawn as a chandelier... The entire ballroom is decked out in a sort of reverse perspective, to defeat the boxiness of the usual theatre space.
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Les Caprices de Marianne
opera by Henri Sauguet
after the play by Alfred de Musset
This sadly neglected piece has been called the "connoisseur's answer to Carmen"; time and again, when listening to it, I am struck by the ferocious power both of the emotions and of the tone-painting. The action is set in a single day, in a suburb of Naples just on a height above the town.
The models below were worked out in some detail in collaboration with Max Charruyer and seek to emphasise the claustrophobia of the action, both spatially and in the fact the action takes place in a single day — the interval between the two acts being the siesta!
The first ideas came from a single sketch, blocking into increasingly abstract shapes a tower and a balcony and an inn doorway, all close to stage front and with the narrowest of passagheways between...
As can be seen, the angle of the sun's course through the day has been carefully considered.
The resulting model proved that these spaces and shapes could be made to work.
The next smaller model was used to try out the dawn-to-dusk lighting; though not yet with the change of light angle...
There is a shortened automated sequence of these lighting scenes available at Caprices. Note that in some browsers the controls that allow these applet sequences are disabled; the page explains how to enable them.
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. . . s i e s t a . . .
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Ariadne auf Naxos
opera by Richard Strauss
Here I want to see the transformation happen almost invisibly and very rapidly as all the elements of what we see in the first act invent themselves afresh for the second act, as if by magic...
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The parallel lines of the stairs become the distant sea, the two archway panels cross over to make a palm, the chandelier takes on the character of the fronds of the palm and the canapés and table are reworked into the waves of the sea and a plant by the cave mouth.... All this is achieved by lighting in conjunction with the strong draughtsmanship of the line of these elmements — which are almost all in flat panels or drops with tonal rendering and not too much colour. The colour comes from the lighting. The entire construction would seem both grand and dramatic yet be very simple and cheap to execute... The music of Strauss is all transformation, so to should be what we see! |
Frankenstein!!
pandemonium by H.K.Gruber
This wild hilarious and occasionally touchingly ironic piece for orchestra & chansonnier (of sorts — often taken by the composer while conducting as well) cannot really be staged as such, the musical numbers move from one to the next too quickly. Yet a strict concert performance doesn't always seem quite enough...
My solution is to use lighting devices such as hanging garlands and neon shapes and also to shift conventional lighting as much as possible, even from within the orchestra.
The music is dazzling; so will this be!
References below are to the page numbers in the Boosey edition for full orchestra.
Sometimes the scene will be lit only by the musicians' lamps, for instance between pages 11 and 12, indicated by the word "darkness" below.
There is a shortened automated sequence of these lighting scenes available at Frankenstein!!. Note that in some browsers the controls that allow these applet sequences are disabled; the page explains how to enable them.
Note also: for portrait sketches of Nali after a performance of Frankenstein!! in Edinburgh, click here.
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Fanfare - Prologue
and a sun for
pp.5-11...
Between pp.6-11, slowly dimming, going down to darkness at p.11 ("Zueignung") so that at 5 before fig.6 there is a sudden burst of sets of flickering lights to announce...
Ia: Zueignung
red + blue (12-15) and then at fig.7, blue + yellow (15-21) — at which point the singer/conductor reveals bat-wings...
Ib: Fräulein Dracula
[among the lights are suggestions of a moon (p.17 & seq) and a castle (19-)...] At p.24, down to darkness again, with a violet spot on the singer/conductor:
IIa: Goldfinger & Bond More sparkling lights (pp.29-35), now yellow/green/blue in a Las Vegas casino effect...
becoming cactus & sky & sun for
IIb: Django
fading down to darkness and then, all of a sudden (p.50):
IIc: Unhold
(pp.50-56) with a shower effect at fig.30; and then back to darkness till...
III: Ein Mi-Ma-Monsterchen
a little line
of lights
IV: Fanfare & Intermezzo
Darkness
gives way to
V: Frankenstein!!
Then darkness.
VI: Rattenlied & Crusoelied ...begin in darkness (p.85)
but build to a circus tent (the yellow line, pp.91-109) with its mad-bat moon; then adding the tree trunk (the orange upright, at fig.47) and the tree top at fig.48; these are reduced back from fig.50 (p.103) till just the tent again at fig.52 and down to darkness for:
VII: Herr Supermann
VIII: Finale
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The Adventures of Mr Brouček
opera by Leoš Janáček
Preliminary Model for Part One
The word Brouček means a little beetle and I want to make his world as stark yet as entangled as I imagine a beetle's to be — and as the music can be too... My model is for the Part One — The Adventures of Mr Brouček on the Moon — only.
Part One gives us a moonlit night outside an inn in Prague... with the cathedral to the right. For mooniness I have used black-&-white a great deal, the moon of course black against the mists that the act contains...
The various transformations of this act are achieved simply by removing drops and revealing a moonscape very much simpler than our world below.
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seen from the balcony...
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...and from the gods
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L'homme assis dans le couloir
to a text by Marguérite Duras
A dramatisation of L'homme assis dans le couloir needs little other than his chair, yet I have felt that all edges and definition should go; hence, with a stage as dark as possible, I want the outlines of the room and the floor and the doorway (made from white strips of wood or metal that just catch light) to be in skew positions as if in a sketch, not following the straight line or angles of the actual stage area, and to be glimpsed as if by accident as the low lighting shifts now and then. The delimiting right angles of the stage area must as much as possible never be evident to the audience.
Below are two sketches of such an effect, in charcoal and in ink.
