Okay, I'm excited. Tonight Kathleen and I are going to see Falstaff. I got tickets, because any opera that comes is worth going to. But, I wasn't too excited because I saw Falstaff in Brussels and didn't especially care for it. But I think that must have been a different Falstaff. Because today when I was checking for reviews online I got really excited by the Taipei Times review. This production sounds incredible, here's the bit that got me really excited:
Next week's production in Taipei is by Wei Ying-chuan (魏瑛娟), the young director of the Taiwan theater group Shakespeare's Wild Sisters. Everyone concerned is being tight-lipped about what the production will contain, but what can be gleaned is that reference in the initial publicity to the early 20th century modernist painter Piet Mondrian should now be discounted. Instead, the show will be in a high-fashion, 2005 style, with gorgeous youth-culture costumes, and make-up and hair under the guidance of the cosmetics and hair-styling products companies I Prefer, L'Oreal, Govin and Shu Uemura. The style of popular children's paper dolls, with interchangeable two-dimension cut-out dresses, will characterize aspects of both the costumes and the decor.
Another fascinating aspect is:
The most sensational news was that the NSO conductor Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬) will wear a series of costumes, harmonizing in style with those of the characters in the opera. There's no ballet as such in Falstaff, but in this production dancers dressed identically with the conductor will at various points mimic his movements, giving rise to the question of what is reality and what is dream.
Well, I'll let you know how it goes!
1 comment:
Ah! It was Faust, not Falstaff! Duh. Well, there you go - it's a good thing I figured that out now instead of wondering why he was chasing women instead of selling his soul to the devil.
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