On June 2, the casts for Giulio Cesare in Egitto and Kiss Me, Kate arrived and began rehearsal. Two weeks later, the team for the American fully staged premiere of Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot arrived in Cooperstown. Today, we welcomed the final group of artists — those involved with Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi — to the mix. The cast are all Glimmerglass veterans, and most of them are alumni of the Young American Artists Program: Sarah Coburn , Sandra Piques Eddy, Christopher Job, and Soon young Park. They are joined by Canadian tenor John Tessier, whose recent Glimmerglass roles include Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Ferrando in Così Fan Tutte.
The production will mark the Glimmerglass debut of acclaimed director Anne Bogart. As with the other productions in the 2008 Festival Season, Capuleti will be staged on a set by John Conklin that evokes an Elizabethan theater. Earlier this spring, I had a chance to discuss the show with Anne and learn more about her plans for using the space.
Q. How will you approach the set and the space that John has designed?
A. The most important thing for me in both theater and opera is that the audience’s imagination is provided space to create. It is for this reason that I believe in ideogramic staging and settings. What is the very least that we impose that might allow the audience to dream? With the Bellini opera I want the space to feel luscious, inviting, mysterious and like an open playing field. Imagine the original story of the Capulet and the Montague conflict, or perhaps the Jets and the Sharks. Two teams, two tribes, two gangs, meet one another in the middle of the night on an open playing field. Their disagreement is interrupted by an exceptionally poignant love story.
Q. On a practical level, the size and shape of a space affect how performers move within it. Are there other ways in which you expect the architectural language of this particular set to affect how people work in it?
A. I want to make sure that the space is unencumbered, uncluttered, elegant and spacious, both vertically and horizontally. I want to draw imagery from the bodies and voices of the singers, their movement and their stillness.
Q. Even if set were unchanged for all four performances, I imagine it would look very different depending on the music being played. How does Bellini's musical language affect how you see and move in the space? This music is not as formal as Handel's, but we are still faced with long sections where the action stops while we revel in a single affect ...and lots of vocal fireworks. How do you, as a director, deal with the dramaturgy of a bel canto opera for an action-oriented 21st-century audience? How does this particular set inform your treatment of the extended sings in this piece?
A. In the drawn-out moments I am inspired by Shakespeare’s notion of soliloquy. Think of soliloquy and aria as the same idea. The story pauses and we enter into an interior emotional space. How that space different from the storytelling of the action? These action-stop close-ups allow for the movement to be more poetic, more dream-like, and less pedestrian.
Q. Your main body of work has been developed with SITI Company, a group of artists who share a specific and ongoing training. To what extent do you bring techniques of Suzuki and/or Viewpoints into your work with non-SITI folk? Are there elements/ideas that are most useful when you are building a company from scratch for a production? For THIS production?
A. Both the Suzuki and the Viewpoints training, which indeed my company does on a daily basis and teaches around the world, are a way for actors to practice the art of stage presence, flexibility, focus, clarity and spontaneity, both physically and vocally. But all performers, no matter what their training, are struggling with these issues on a daily basis. It is not necessary to do the Viewpoints or Suzuki to grapple with them. Any good training asks for the same effort. For that reason, we are definitely not starting from scratch. We all start from where we are at in the development of our techniques and philosophies.
Q. Although some elements of the set will change from production to production, I imagine some of the most drastic visual transformations may happen via lighting. It's probably a bit early to talk about this in detail — since so much it will develop in tech — but have you had any preliminary conversations about the use of light in this production?
A. I have worked with Chris Akerlind on many occasions. He is an extraordinary collaborator and a terrifically gifted lighting designer. But the best collaborations are not about talking or discussing or concepts or ideas. Lighting is an art that incorporates time, space, tempo, duration, intensity, shape, focus, architecture and movement. Chris responds to what we do with the staging and the story and he brings his own point of view. I do not try to predetermine what he is going to do. Collaboration is an act of trust and belief and respect for those with whom one is collaboration.
Q. Your configuration of the Globe-inspired space is asymmetrical. Are there particular benefits and/or challenges of working in a space that is off-balance? To what extent might you work with the other artists to either balance the architecture and/or revel in the imbalance?
A. Balance and imbalance is the noble secret of any artistic enterprise. A great singer or actor or painter or musician or architect allows him/herself to go off balance in order to welcome the struggle to regain the harmony of balance. This is the artistic leap. So, in choosing the imbalance of the architecture in John Conklin’s arrangement of the space, we will be forced to struggle constantly to find the harmony and balance of the space. And this is a good thing! The world of I Capuleti e i Montecchi is a world significantly off balance. Falling in love, a central action in the opera, is the act of falling out of balance. We hope that the world can right itself. Those who manage to find the harmony of balance from a state of imbalance are heroes.
The production will mark the Glimmerglass debut of acclaimed director Anne Bogart. As with the other productions in the 2008 Festival Season, Capuleti will be staged on a set by John Conklin that evokes an Elizabethan theater. Earlier this spring, I had a chance to discuss the show with Anne and learn more about her plans for using the space.
Q. How will you approach the set and the space that John has designed?
A. The most important thing for me in both theater and opera is that the audience’s imagination is provided space to create. It is for this reason that I believe in ideogramic staging and settings. What is the very least that we impose that might allow the audience to dream? With the Bellini opera I want the space to feel luscious, inviting, mysterious and like an open playing field. Imagine the original story of the Capulet and the Montague conflict, or perhaps the Jets and the Sharks. Two teams, two tribes, two gangs, meet one another in the middle of the night on an open playing field. Their disagreement is interrupted by an exceptionally poignant love story.
Q. On a practical level, the size and shape of a space affect how performers move within it. Are there other ways in which you expect the architectural language of this particular set to affect how people work in it?
A. I want to make sure that the space is unencumbered, uncluttered, elegant and spacious, both vertically and horizontally. I want to draw imagery from the bodies and voices of the singers, their movement and their stillness.
Q. Even if set were unchanged for all four performances, I imagine it would look very different depending on the music being played. How does Bellini's musical language affect how you see and move in the space? This music is not as formal as Handel's, but we are still faced with long sections where the action stops while we revel in a single affect ...and lots of vocal fireworks. How do you, as a director, deal with the dramaturgy of a bel canto opera for an action-oriented 21st-century audience? How does this particular set inform your treatment of the extended sings in this piece?
A. In the drawn-out moments I am inspired by Shakespeare’s notion of soliloquy. Think of soliloquy and aria as the same idea. The story pauses and we enter into an interior emotional space. How that space different from the storytelling of the action? These action-stop close-ups allow for the movement to be more poetic, more dream-like, and less pedestrian.
Q. Your main body of work has been developed with SITI Company, a group of artists who share a specific and ongoing training. To what extent do you bring techniques of Suzuki and/or Viewpoints into your work with non-SITI folk? Are there elements/ideas that are most useful when you are building a company from scratch for a production? For THIS production?
A. Both the Suzuki and the Viewpoints training, which indeed my company does on a daily basis and teaches around the world, are a way for actors to practice the art of stage presence, flexibility, focus, clarity and spontaneity, both physically and vocally. But all performers, no matter what their training, are struggling with these issues on a daily basis. It is not necessary to do the Viewpoints or Suzuki to grapple with them. Any good training asks for the same effort. For that reason, we are definitely not starting from scratch. We all start from where we are at in the development of our techniques and philosophies.
Q. Although some elements of the set will change from production to production, I imagine some of the most drastic visual transformations may happen via lighting. It's probably a bit early to talk about this in detail — since so much it will develop in tech — but have you had any preliminary conversations about the use of light in this production?
A. I have worked with Chris Akerlind on many occasions. He is an extraordinary collaborator and a terrifically gifted lighting designer. But the best collaborations are not about talking or discussing or concepts or ideas. Lighting is an art that incorporates time, space, tempo, duration, intensity, shape, focus, architecture and movement. Chris responds to what we do with the staging and the story and he brings his own point of view. I do not try to predetermine what he is going to do. Collaboration is an act of trust and belief and respect for those with whom one is collaboration.
Q. Your configuration of the Globe-inspired space is asymmetrical. Are there particular benefits and/or challenges of working in a space that is off-balance? To what extent might you work with the other artists to either balance the architecture and/or revel in the imbalance?
A. Balance and imbalance is the noble secret of any artistic enterprise. A great singer or actor or painter or musician or architect allows him/herself to go off balance in order to welcome the struggle to regain the harmony of balance. This is the artistic leap. So, in choosing the imbalance of the architecture in John Conklin’s arrangement of the space, we will be forced to struggle constantly to find the harmony and balance of the space. And this is a good thing! The world of I Capuleti e i Montecchi is a world significantly off balance. Falling in love, a central action in the opera, is the act of falling out of balance. We hope that the world can right itself. Those who manage to find the harmony of balance from a state of imbalance are heroes.
photo credit:
1. Stage ops working on John Conklin's set, which will be used in all four productions this summer. photo credit: John Glover
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