USA: CINEMA DIRECTOR BRUCE BERESFORD DIRECTS AND GIORGIO ARMANI DESIGN A HOLLYWOOD INSPIRED PRODUCTION OF VERDI'S OPERA " RIGOLETTO "

Record ID: 389211

  • Title: USA: CINEMA DIRECTOR BRUCE BERESFORD DIRECTS AND GIORGIO ARMANI DESIGN A HOLLYWOOD INSPIRED PRODUCTION OF VERDI'S OPERA " RIGOLETTO "
  • Date: 14th April 2000
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, USA (RECENT) (REUTERS- ACCESS ALL) (SOUNDBITE) (English) GAI GHERARDI MANAGER OF l.a.Eyeworks SAYING "It's an L.A. thing, there's no doubt about it. It's sort of the quintessential mask if you will."
  • Embargoed: 29th April 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAV2N9WHBTQ26DZAHS8ZL3GSKG
  • Story Text: A new production of Verdi's "Rigoletto" has turned the world of opera on its head.Directed by film director Bruce Beresford of "Driving Miss Daisy" fame, Beresford has applied his camera lens to the operatic stage, and with the help of Giorgio Armani, come up with some breathtaking results.
    What do sixteenth century Mantua and Hollywood have in common.According to Academy award-winning film director, Bruce Beresford, quite a lot.
    Taking on Verdi's "Rigoletto", Beresford has headed the team at the Los Angeles Opera and translated the piece into a Hollywood tale of movies, power and scandal.
    Set Designer John Stoddart is the man that came up with the idea, Beresford is the man that applied his camera lens to the stage, and Christopher Harlan is the man that put it into action: "Basically the idea that the Hollywood mogul today is very much like the Duke character, someone that holds court, someone that has lots of power and sway and then it just kind of went down the line and translated from Verdi to this production."
    Amazingly, the actual storyline has been altered very little; Verdi's plot really lent itself to this new interpretation.But characters and settings are on a whole new plane.The hunchback, Rigoletto, has been transformed into an agent, fully accompanied with the casting couch and poster-backdrop.
    Perhaps the most visually stunning element of the opera is the clothes the characters are wearing.Costume Designer Johann Stegmeir decided that Giorgio Armani was the only man worthy of dressing his cast, it's the look of the Italian designer after all that's the unofficial uniform for the world of Hollywood.
    The stage is a virtual fashion show for the designer, who was delighted to dress Verdi's creations in his pieces.
    Women saunter past in little sequinny numbers; the men do their thing in Armani signature suits.At the Los Angeles Opera House there's been an additional guard at the stage door, for fear that cast members will become too attached to their new wardrobe and steal them.
    But good as they look, for many of the singers, playing the role in this sort of dress was not easy, as Christopher recalls: "Frank Lopardo who's singing the Duke had a really hard time at the outset because he's done this role so often and he has an idea of what he is and he gets himself into the character, throwing himself a couple of hundred years back.
    What we should have done is we should have had him in costume from the first rehearsal."
    And in shades.The traditional mask has been ditched for the defining look of LA - sunglasses.l.a.Eyeworks are the hottest thing in L.A.at the moment, these are the shades that anyone who's anyone is wearing and this is where the costume department went to create their look.The manager of l.a.Eyeworks, Gai Gherardi, describes what she's come up with: "What are we doing? We're portraying the agent, we're portaying the starlet - everybody's kind of got an ulterior motive going on and the glasses can give you that mysterious persona.So for example with Rigoletto, a very powerful character, got a lot going on in his mind.We put him in this really bold, really sort of chinky, power-lunch kind of glasses.And if you read it from the stage, it's incredible, it just looks incredible."
    But with the exception of the clothes, for members of the cast everything else was the same as playing traditional opera.Pamela Helen Stephen, who plays the whore Maddalena, said that the update altered only superficial things, the core elements haven't changed in the slightest: "It doesn't differ in any way because the music is exactly the same, the emotion is the same, the sentiment is the same and the passion is the same - nothing changes.Physically, of course it does, because you're not wearing period costumes and you're not in fact restricted by that."
    What Pamela does say is that the vision of the director was very obviously rooted in his filmmaking, which is his staple work.Beresford, whose best-known film is Academy Award winning "Driving Miss Daisy", has in fact directed a number of operas - this is by no means his first attempt - but all of the team agreed that he applied his camera lens to the staging, and even did his initial work on a storyboard.As Pamela says, it was very much a movie performance that Beresford was looking to achieve.
    And gone are the grand costumes and heaving chests that have until now defined the world of opera - singers in this production have been made to lose all the exagerrated, formal acting and instead play their roles in a realistic, natural way.
    It's a new form of opera, but still very much the spectacle it's supposed to be.Christopher insists that there's no serious judgement being made at the film industry, "it was more to have a common language with this public, with this audience, because we know it so well.I mean we live around the paparazzi and we see everyday in Entertainment Weekly and things like that what's going on in the stars' lives.We just have an immediate reference point right there."
    But it'll still be a shock to the world outside of Los Angeles who are about to be hit by this production.It's just opened in San Diego and will soon be making it's way around the rest of the world.
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