Don Giovanni in Lyon. 1.

Don Giovanni, which opens tomorrow night is the third of the Mozart Da Ponte operas that I have designed the costumes for here in Lyon. The Director is Adrian Noble, set designer - Tom Pye. It's been a terrific experience, and indeed it is one of the great joys of working in opera that you get the opportunity to really get to know such works the best way possible, if your not a musician, that is.

The idea is to revive the operas as a trilogy in January 2011. Through-cast where possible, though so far the only singer who has been in all three is the extraordinary Markus Werba as Guilemo in Cosi, Count Almaviva in Figaro, and as Don Giovanni himself.

We set Cosi on a beach in 2006 with an exceptionally young and beautiful cast, Figaro went back 30 years to the 1980s of the White House. We didn't want it to be set in the 18th century, [surprisingly hard to be sexy in such a self-conciously pretty period] but it had to be set somewhere where the abuse of sexual power made sense. And for Giovanni, Tom had the brilliant idea of going to "little Italy" in 1930s New York.

It works very well, I think. And for the party at the end of Act 1, we turned that into a masked ball in fancy dress, with a nod to the 18th century in the costumes - hence that sketch of a lady in a corset and panniers. We even found the most wonderful black and silver embroidered coat for Don Giovanni which was actually from a very old production of Figaro. It pleased me to give such beautiful costumes another airing, and looks really interesting.

Fanciulla

Fanciulla del West - The Girl of the Golden West, or in Danish, something that looks oddly like Pig del Vest, is very late Puccini, written in America about Californian gold miners, the 'girl' of the title, Minnie, who runs the only bar in the miners' shanty town, and her relationship with gang boss Dick Johnson [the tenor - of course] and the nasty sheriff, Jack Rance - the bass.

I got very fond of it in the end, but it has been rudely described as 'Puccini without the tunes' and it did take a bit of getting into.

It's actually very difficult indeed to design and make interesting and convincing work clothes from another period, 1880s in this case... they tend to come out boring, un-real or just plain wrong.

In the end I went for pencil drawn photo-realism. I had been provided with photos of all the chorus, and managed to find pix of the principals on the internet, and worked with a method that involved the computer a good deal, printing out the photos, drawing the costumes over, or alongside, then scanning them back in again, framing and adding simple back-grounds in photo shop, and printing them out again on heavy art paper. A bit laborious, but it worked beautifully, and the cast greeted their drawings with little cries of delight as they recognised themselves and each other!

Belated Fanciulla

Fanciulla del West actually opened in Aarhus on August 16th, which meant that I returned home precisely 10 days before Suzi and John's wedding. There was no time really for blogging, as I had quite a bit of wedding sewing to do. The wardrobe kindly lent me a machine, and my flat was splendidly light and clean, so the dressmaking bit was actually easier than at home in Duck Street, where there are too many dog hairs for comfort. I made Sefa's yellow silk dress, my own jacket in a tastefully wild Briget Rileyesque printed silk, and cut out several miles of bunting.

There are 600 and something pictures of the wedding on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/martineauwedding/
so I shan't put any more up here!

I did manage to visit the Old Town, [Die Gamlie By] an extraordinary re-constructed village of nearly 80 buildings from all over Denmark, dating from 1500 onward. It managed to avoid the Disneyland effect danger, and was actually very interesting.
I very much liked the patterns of sunlight on the wooden floor of the newly opened, very brightly painted Merchant's House.
And there was even a tiny theatre built in 1817 and moved from Helsingor, [yes, Hamlet's Elsinor] I home the home town didn't mind, I shouldn't have been pleased if such a delightful theatre, complete with little dressing-rooms and working hemp scene change system had been taken from my home town, but maybe they got a fine new one in exchange.

Much Ado Technical Rehearsal 2

The technical rehearsal rumbles on. I've sat through a lot worse but it's always a rush, and the changes are difficult. The costumes do look nice though, here are a few more photos.

I quite like the one of Tony O'Donnell as Dogberry having his breeches mended!
Not exactly part of the drama, but certainly part of the tech!

Much Ado in Regents Park

Here are a couple of the drawings for Much Ado.

This morning we started the technical rehearsal in costume for the first time. They look very good, but it's an extremely long day. I am very pleased with Sam's masks - here are some examples...

The costumes are very plain, but quite effective in the open air, with the men in warm neutrals and the girls in fruit coloured shot silk.

Niagara

On Thursday we had a day off so I decided to go on a coach trip to the Niagara falls, thinking I would be
unlikely to get another opportunity. John and Mich Gunter (the set designer of Boccanegra and his wife) decided to come too, so we booked on a bus trip from the hotel over the road. It was all
quite an experience! I have something of an aversion to the guided tour,
and this one fulfilled many of the reasons why! But we didn't quite feel
like hiring a car and I didn't have my licence with me anyway.

The guide/driver talked solidly the entire way, it was informative, but quite relentless, I learnt more than I wanted about American Football and the hopelessness of the local ice hockey team, but he was very interesting on Canadian history and topography.
Having taken the shorter trip, we didn't get to go to the 18th century town of Niagara on the Lake, which is lovely - apparently.

Still it was well worth it for the experience of the falls themselves which are indeed amazing.in Summer there is a boat which takes you behind the main fall itself, but its not safe yet, as the 'ice bars' are still in place in Lake Eirie and great chunks of ice are likely to tumble over the edge at any time. Dramatic, I think, but painful..

There is an esplanade opposite the American Falls which could have been Worthing, but behind it was a tourist strip of quite speechless vulgarity! I do find bad moving waxworks depressing... think a revolving J Depp on his pirate ship and Harrison Ford being endlessly pulled up and down over a pit on his rope - oh and a sphinx with a moving lower jaw and beard singing Elvis songs, actually that was quite funny.

Then back to Toronto, [which simply means 'meeting place' in Huronese - we learnt].

last day in Moscow

I didn't get to do much sightseeing in Moscow, what with one thing and another, too busy - too tired and so forth. But there was a monastery in the next road where the monks restored icons, here is the Church Duster. There were also quite a few people who had come in to pray.

I went to a couple of services, each was full, and not just of old ladies either, Mikael visited the big cathedral opposite the Pushkin Gallery which had a weekday Lenten service on - also full. The Russian Church is clearly powerfully alive and very well!

On a different note, over the road was this sculpture gallery, I was supposed to be looking at the statue of Schostakovitch, but was rather taken with this Don Quixote and Sancho Panza....

1st Night 3

More pictures...

Ist Night 2

These picture were supposed to go with the 1st 1st night post, somehow the window had got hidden behind the main page..

Golfo's body painting was done quite beautifully in the end by an artist called Helen, everyone wanted their photos taken with him after the show! There is one of me somewhere, but I need to get hold of it somehow...

Ist Night in Moscow

The last few days in Moscow were very difficult. Napoli, with its 240 costumes, would have been a tough show even with efficient stage management, a friendly costume supervisor/ assistant, and being able to get home at weekends. A month away from home is too long for me, and I found out what various chums who have worked there warned - Russia does your head in in the end!

This inness of head, whatever that is may actually mean, manifested itself by stress responses such as a forgetful clumsiness with my self and possessions that would have been a comedy turn had it not felt so demented. I lost things constantly, both phones went at one point, the precious iPhone never to return [grrr..]

Despite all that it was an unforgettable experience, and the 1st night was a great, joyous success. It was wonderful, with a tremendous party afterwards - showers of flowers and chocolates, and vast quantities of alcholol. The Russian wardrobe department were so nice to me, and so pleased with the results of all the hard work that the difficulties will fade very quickly, and the good bits, the friendliness, affection and skill of so many will always be with me.

Act 3

Act 3 of Napoli is sometimes done on its own, [indeed it is what we did in Prague last year], it is unofficially called "The Joy of Dance" and I must say you would have to be very mean-spirited not to be swept along by it all - it is truly joyous. Despite the noise of the yelling of the choreographers - 'ligne - ligne' they shriek, the director of ballet shouting instructions and the chatter of various departments giving notes, the sheer exuberance of the dance and the whirling colour really does make the heart beat a little faster. And it's been working its magic since 1842!

I'll try and get some better pix tomorrow with the first cast.

Act 2

Don't think I can stay in the flat much longer today, a work party is decorating the hallway and drilling enthusiastically, apparently into my door - the noise is deafening.

Here is the the bad water-god being wigged up, with his very engaging daughter in attendance.

I got fed up with being told that I could only have his body decorations stitched on to net that looked like granny's lisle stockings - not sexy at all, when suddenly Mrs Golfo introduced a friend who did body art! Brilliant, she arrived, took a brief look at the costume drawing, got out her little pots of make up and produced a fantastic seaweedy tattoo.. It looked a bit like cabbage leaves yesterday, but will be lovely when the colour is right.

I tried to get some pictures of this act, I quite like the swirly one - Will try again more selectively tomorrow.
Today is the dancers' day off, so the wardrobe don't want me there to give them yet more notes, they will have quite enough to do finishing the pages they already have.
So I shall go out in a minute - it's my last chance of sight-seeing.

Act 1

I haven't really solved the problems of taking good on-stage pix, even though there is more light than usual for Napoli. Here are 2 for Act 1 - taken from the side of the stage, which is close enough, but hardly the ideal view-point. There are moments when the dancers freeze and hold a pose, but they are few and fleeting.

There was a small door in the proscenium arch that would have pitched me into the orchestra pit had I gone through it too far, good vantage point though, but embarrassing!