![]() ![]() How to represent those three periods in the set design was a challenge Lien, whose background is in architecture and who designs for theater and dance as well as opera, eagerly accepted. The opera blends three time periods: the actual era in which the titular rulers lived (the queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt reigned from 51 to 30 BCE) the era of 1930s Hollywood film glamor and our own age of self-made icons. ![]() Zoom meetings commenced to discuss the production’s concept.Īnd it’s a layered concept. The artistic team, based in New York and here, came together in March 2020, and then: pandemic. The set for “Antony and Cleopatra” was challenging for New York designer Mimi Lien and the production’s director, Elkhanah Pulitzer. Photographs by Hardy Wilson for Drew Altizer Photography.īehind the scenes, both the costume shop and the scene shop have been busily building all five operas for the season, which includes, in order, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “ Eugene Onegin,” Francis Poulenc’s “ Dialogues of the Carmelites” and new productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s “ La Traviata” (that set was finished end of last year) and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “ Orpheus and Eurydice.” Right: The mock-up (working sample) of Cleopatra headdress. Courtesy San Francisco Opera. Preparations for the world premiere of John Adams’ "Antony and Cleopatra." Left: Galen Till, Senior Costume Production Supervisor at San Francisco Opera, inspects a sample collar on one of Cleopatra's Soldiers. ![]() The shop crew of 44, which includes a costume director, a senior production supervisor and a senior milliner, has been working on “Antony” since January. The glitter that represents Roman and Egyptian royalty lights up the shop: Antony’s golden headpiece with long golden curls attached Caesar’s signature laurel wreath resting casually on a table-top Cleopatra’s shimmery-blue, form-fitting gown for floating on the barge and lounging by the pool a necklace of metallic-looking tiles (two dozen such necklaces, made of plastic, are sent off-site to be created on a 3-D printer for Caesar’s all-women army). The opera is a co-commission/co-production among San Francisco Opera, Liceu Opera Barcelona, Teatro Massimo di Palermo and the Metropolitan Opera. It is approaching the September 10 opening of the Opera’s triumphant centennial season - 90 years in the Opera House itself - with the world premiere of internationally renowned Bay Area-based composer John Adams’ “ Antony and Cleopatra.” Adams adapted the libretto from Shakespeare with some text from Plutarch, Virgil and other classical works in consultation with director Elkhanah Pulitzer and dramaturg Lucia Scheckner. The Opera purchases only modern costumes the rest are built here, in this long, sky-lit room in the Veterans Building. On a midweek morning, the San Francisco Opera costume shop is a colorful wonderland of dressmaker’s dummies, quietly humming sewing machines, ironing boards, bolts of fabric, racks of frilly gowns, ceiling-high shelves of boxes with handwritten labels - “felt skullcaps,” “moulded leather breastplate with leg flaps”- workers bent over cutting tables. ![]()
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