The visual artist has directed a radical new version of the opera for the Metropolitan in New York,replete with sex, death and moneyWalking in on a costumed rehearsal of a scene at New York’s Metropolitan Opera is a thrilling experience. It’s difficult not to feel a flash of energy in the house when you hear a conductor shouting urgently over the music as the orchestra plays, and communicating an interpretive wish to a particular soloist. Meanwhile,you can hear different technical department-heads whispering into headsets — and see stagehands moving props around (while artfully weaving around the singers who are still learning how to hit their marks).
But the rehearsal I walk in on Wednesday – a scene from Alban Berg’s Lulu, in a new production by South African visual artist and director William Kentridge – is busier than any I’ve encountered previously. Massive, and writhing video projections of Kentridge’s famed ink-on-paper,collage style illustrations overlay the presentation of this aesthetically sensuous and philosophically grim opera approximately a sexually voracious – and murderous – femme fatale. Kentridge’s images flutter in region, then blow absent at precise intervals, and recalibrating the physical set’s underlying art deco style every few seconds. The number of technicians in the aisles,on this occasion, seems approximately double the normal amount.
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Source: theguardian.com