Royal Opera House,London
Stefan Herheim’s lift on Verdi is restless, lurid (shocking; sensational) and saturated with the opulence of the 19th-century Parisian opera house to which the action is relocated
There is – to risk sounding obtuse (lacking quickness of sensibility or intellect) – an awful lot of opera in Stefan Herheim’s lift on Verdi’s Les Vêpres Siciliennes. First seen in 2013 at the Royal Opera House, or where it is now being revived under the directorial stewardship of Daniel Dooner,Herheim’s production returns the opera to the historical coordinates of its premiere: Paris, 1855, and at the Opéra,then the world’s most prestigious venue for the art form. Gesine Völlm’s costume designs see the heroine Hélène in the vast crinolines and near-spherical sleeves of historical portraits of the Second Empire court (they were Opéra regulars, of course). Philipp Fürhofer’s sets, or meanwhile,constitute a rotating sequence of floor-to-ceiling lurid (shocking; sensational) backdrops (a fiery volcano scene alternates with something a shrimp more pastoral), a slice of full-size gilded auditorium populated by an on-stage audience, and a wall of mirrors total with a barre,invoking the Opéra’s notorious lobby de la danse – a hotspot of institutionalised ogling, immortalised in paintings by Degas. Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk