Vita Tzykun, costume designer:

Masha Froliak: What time period did you work with on this production?
Vita Tzykun: The approach we chose was that of Mannerism—when the Renaissance went out of control. If during the Renaissance all the shapes were absolutely symmetrical, during this period they became much more distorted: figures became elongated, dresses became larger, shoulders became wider. The society of Rigoletto is one during which the Duke has absolute power of his court. We wanted to present it in this exaggerated mannerist period.

MF: There must have been a lot of historical research?
VT: It was like learning a new language, really. They had many pieces of clothing that we don’t currently have today; they all had different names, they were made differently, and connected together differently. The colors, shapes, and layers had their own meanings. The larger your silhouette was, and the more fabric you had in your clothing—the wealthier you were. That is why you could see the duke wearing really voluptuous pants, a broad shoulder doublet, and a large fur-lined cape.

MF: Apart from being accurate to the historical time, this production had a variety of stylistic decisions. Can you tell about some of them?
VT: The production is quite stylized in the sense that after Rigoletto is cursed, we see the events through his mind. When Gilda is violated by the Duke, Rigoletto starts seeing her in all-white like an innocent flower. It was important for me to create this pure white and the somewhat non-specific, abstract silhouette. In the end she becomes a ghost; so the symbol of white changes from innocence to ghostly innocence–an impossible ideal. Also, it was a costume decision to make Rigoletto progressively crippled. After the curse, his deformity becomes steadily worse–his hump grows bigger and his leg has a support that grows taller, making it more difficult for him to walk.

Michael Mayes, Rigoletto:

MF: Did the costume influence the evolution of your character?
Michael Mayes: Rigoletto is one of the crown jewels of baritone repertoire; it is a pinnacle, and it is where you want to get your whole life. It is also a very difficult role emotionally, technically, and physically. In the beginning, I was at a loss at how to play this character. Then I got one of Vita’s sketches of a thin, frail man. He was bent over, dragging his jester’s outfit and holding a hat. Her sketch really defined for me what my character was going to be. It inspired my entire vision of Rigoletto.

MF: How did you prepare yourself emotionally for this role?
MM: It sounds very simple–I read the story. I don’t know what it is like to be the father, but I do know what it is like to lose everything you care about in your life. It has happened to me and so I tap into those emotions when I am on stage, I tap into what it feels like to watch your entire world being taken away from you. That is what happens to Rigoletto. No matter what he does, it is one further step towards desolation.

MF: You probably have heroes or role models among baritones who sang Rigoletto–how did that influence your performance? Did it help or distract you?
MM: My heroes in this role are Cornell Macneil, Sherill Milnes, and Leonard Warren, among others. The Met has great on-demand recordings, and I have been listening to them my whole life. But, at some point you have stop listening to those guys. You have to find your own voice. We are living in a time haunted by the ghosts of the greatest baritones that had ever lived. Now when a great baritone dies there are four or five versions of his Rigoletto that you are always fighting. Sometimes you simply have to turn it off.

MF: I assume it is very difficult for an opera singer to sing and act simultaneously. In your performance you were bent over most of the time. How did you manage?
MM: This is the most difficult thing I have done on stage. It is incredibly technically difficult. Plus, the emotions in this piece are really powerful. But I am always an actor first. I am an actor who sings, not a singer who acts. My acting and emotional state in every moment is the source from which everything else comes. To be bent over all the time makes it hard to access your support, because you are really cut in half, it is a constant battle to be present in the moment, to react to everything that happens on stage, but also to be aware of the fact that I have to breathe and sing.

A scene from Boston Lyric Opera’s Rigoletto. Photo by Marina Levitskaya.

John Conklin, set designer:

MF: Can you explain the interplay of outside and inside in your sets—a marble model of the city, which represents an illusion of something ideal on the one hand, and at the same time dark brick walls on the inside?
John Conklin: The opera itself is divided in two: the more opulent, rich, and decadent world of the court, juxtaposed against the dark side of Rigoletto’s mind. The scenery is literally two-sided; on one side there are court paintings, and on the other just dark material. I felt that there was also a division between an ideal world and a world of passion, revenge, murder, and dark impulse. The brick walls are the container of violent action, and then above them there is a white marble city, which looks down ironically on the actions below.

MF: What is the symbolism of the imagery and your choice of paintings?
JC: I wanted to find a painting which provides contrast against the pure Renaissance of the city above (the Renaissance of Piero della Francesca). The paintings were based on Annibale Carracci, who is more connected with mannerism. We see Venus, Mars, and Cupid presented in an erotic way. There is also a naked figure of a boy from Michelangelo’s fresco in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. There are gigantic nude male figures, and also a naked woman in the midst. There is an erotic side, but also the question of the meaning of love. In the opera we see paternal love and we also see the sexual attraction shared between the Duke and Gilda. I think that the combined images of love and sexuality are part of the ambiguity of the whole piece.

MF: What would you say was your main idea or aim in this piece?
JC: Rigoletto is a very powerful piece and it is very strongly written in its musical and narrative structure. The idea was to tell two stories—to tell the narrative, the plot, but also to get beneath the surface of the story.

Tomer Zvulun, Director:

MF: What was the most difficult part for you in this production?
Tomer Zvulun: I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with it. But, the most beautiful and the most challenging thing about opera itself is the work’s collaborative nature.  As the director, you have to take your idea and share it, enhance it with a few hundred people: your designers, conductor, singers, prop people, makeup artists, etc. Opera is a very collaborative art form and if your vision is clear people will join it.  

MF: The deconstruction-deformation process seemed to be a crucial element in your vision of Rigoletto. Could you elaborate on this?  
TZ: We really wanted to get into his mind. Costumes, sets, lighting, and of course staging were geared towards that goal. From the moment he is cursed, the lighting changes and the scrim separates him from the rest of the world. He starts to see things through the scrim—things that are threatening to him, such as the Duke, and also things that are precious to him, such as his daughter. As the show progresses, the different things he sees in his mind become continually worse. The lighting is also moving gradually from colorful and happy to yellow and deceased. The acting, sets, lighting, and costumes all show deterioration.

MF: So you kept the production in its original time period, yet you gave it a new perspective through a subjective view of Rigoletto?
TZ: The whole team is highly theatrical and cinematic. Personally, my greatest influence is cinema. Vita is also a designer for both theater and cinema. That prism is part of our aesthetics. We live in a world that is highly visual, highly modern, and highly ADD. If we don’t keep the attention of the audience, we are going to lose them. This is why it is very important that a production moves forward relentlessly.  Even though it is in-period, our perspective is very modern, psychological, cinematic, and theatrical.

MF: Audience had a very strong reaction to this piece. How do you feel about your work? Are you satisfied with the result?
TZ: I could not be happier. I was very moved at the opening night. The cast was completely and utterly committed to this production. During the final scene when Gilda appears one last time and says good-bye to her father, you could hear the audience breathing, you could hear the drop of a pin. That kind of miracle doesn’t happen often in opera.

By Masha Froliak

The post Rigoletto at Boston Lyric Opera appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Marina’s desire to rehearse her own funeral was not unexpected. However, it probably took some guts from Abramovic, whose performances deal with real time and space to give full control of re-envisioning her life to Robert Wilson, whose works are famously abstract. When about a month ago I asked Marina about her work with Mr. Wilson, she told me about her initial shock when Wilson announced she will be playing the role of her own mother…

Entering the 55000-square-foot Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory, to view the production of “Life and Death of Marina Abramovic,” the audience first faced a massive construction that later revealed itself to be a specially installed stage. On each seat there was a newspaper announcing that “Artist Marina Abramovic dies at 67.” On stage there were three white angular coffins and three bodies each with masks all resembling Marina.

Where do you begin when making a piece of biographical theater? Robert Wilson certainly didn’t follow any chronological order in the life of his subject. He bombarded the audience with visually surreal, fragmentally structured scenes that were rather reminiscent of paintings. Meanwhile Willem Dafoe, the narrator, was chaotically pronouncing the dates and facts from Marina’s life, bursting, giggling, whispering, and rolling his sounds. Dafoe was like a mad scientist dissecting and examining all the emotional and painful stories that make up the artist Marina Abramovic. “The story of the washing machine,” “The ashtray,” “The story of the shoe polish,” “The story of the Russian roulette”—all the absurdist suffering and black Slavic humor becomes so tragic in this staging that you almost have to laugh.

Directed and designed by Robert Wilson, the whole piece was like a puzzle of abstract visual and sound elements with, of course, endless light cues. Traditional Serbian music by Svetlana Spajic was interwoven with the emotional performance of Antony from Antony and the Johnsons, who wrote several compositions for the production. Excerpts of original works of Amanda Koogan’s “Yellow” and “Medea” as well as Kira O’Reilley’s “Stair falling” were also organically incorporated into what turned out to be something of a quasi-opera. It seemed that each character, each element in the visionary staging of Robert Wilson, spoke its own personal story yet being a metaphor to the life of Abramovic. Marina’s acting, on the other hand, was awkward, but beautifully so. She seemed to be in constant need of “reality” in order to feel in sync with everything on stage, and yet she was the furthest from it. In the end, all the pieces came together.

In the closing scene, Wilson brought us back to the funeral. While Antony was singing “Volcano of snow”—an overall transcending experience—Marina Abramovic was elevated on the ropes suggesting ascension of the spirit…

What were you thinking about, Marina, levitating above us?

By Masha Froliak

The post Robert Wilson’s Life and Death of Marina Abramovic appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

I met Deborah last summer. She invited me to her beautiful place in Ansonia, on Upper West Side, when I had asked her to meet for an interview. Entering the apartment of Turbeville was like entering the settings of one of her photographs: tinted light, dark furniture, heavy drapery, large bronze chandelier in the living room… Turbeville was fascinated with the “atmosphere” and “mood” that were also the key elements of her images.  As she sat in the heavy leather chair only half of her face was softly lit.

Deborah looked mysterious and a little distant and it reminded me of the kind of look the models in her images usually had. In her photographs she constructed her own reality – she chose desolated places, whether grotesque bath houses or on the contrary aristocratic palaces and gardens, and picked unusually looking models. Clothing never seemed to be the subject of Turbeville’s images, as it typically is in fashion photography.

Her visual language was dreamy, poetic and charged with emotional tension. “It seems there is a narrative in your images,” I told her, “but we don’t know what the story is.” “That is exactly what I want my works to be”, she said, “I like to build up a mystery, but not finish it”.

Born in Boston and having received extensive training in ballet and theater, Turbeville didn’t plan on becoming a photographer. She moved to New York when she was 20 and early in her career worked for the fashion designer Clair McCardell. In the mid 60s she became an editor of Harper’s Bazaar and then of Mademoiselle. “It was the dynamic atmosphere and brilliant photographers around that made me think it would be an interesting thing to do—taking fashion photographs”, Deborah said. Richard Avedon was among the first who suggested Turbeville should start photographing.

In the mid 70s her images were already published alongside Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Her style however was distinctly different from her contemporaries and more reminiscent of early “primitive” photography of Eugene Atget, George Brassai, August Sander and Henry Lartigue. She often scratched and tore her negatives, or used sepia and black and white tones to make the photographs look aged.

As we were sitting in a baroque environment of her home I asked Deborah what influenced her visual style. She started talking about her profound interest in literature; Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, Proust, Henry James, Flaubert, and Virginia Wolf. She then pointed to the room behind her, which was full with shelves of tapes and DVDs, claiming that cinema had been another major influence—in particular silent films of the 20s and 30s as well as German expressionism and Russian Cinema. Remarkably, in photography Turbeville was self-taught.

She had a very distinct aesthetic vision which was far from banal and obvious, but rather rooted in experimentalism and the avant-garde. Her soft focus misty images, where time and space was never identified, created an overall mood of longing and suspense. She favored haunted looking and deserted locations, empty streets, abandoned houses, and uninhabited palaces. Women in her settings often looked lost and thoughtful, as well as playful and mysterious.

The artist as a young woman. Image courtesy of Marek and Associates.

“I never wanted to be too commercial” Deborah said.

In late 70s she moved to Paris, where she lived 5 years, feeling that it was the only way to stay truthful to her visual style. There Turbeville was contacted by Jacqueline Onassis and was offered to work on a special project—a series of photographs capturing the secret and hidden rooms of Versailles that visitors never see. She later won an American Book Award for “Unseen Versailles” (1981).

Over the years she did several books, among them: Deborah Turbeville: The Fashion Pictures (2011), Past Imperfect (2009), Casa no Name (2009), Studio St. Petersburg (1997), Newport Remembered (1994), and Wallflower (1978).

Among her clients there were many renowned design brands including Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang, Nike, and Valentino. Her photographs appeared at the NY Times, American, German, Italian Vogue, W magazine and others. And yet if you asked her, Turbeville didn’t completely feel comfortable being called a fashion photographer. “No matter what I photograph I would still be called a fashion photographer”, she laughed, “There is not much you can do about it, it is like beating a dead horse.”

Turbeville, who in the beginning seemed very reserved, was in fact a very open and frank person, passionate about life and art. She talked about rich textures of the palace in Sicily where she shot a recent Valentino campaign; she passionately discussed her favorite Russian and Ukrainian directors and writers, as well as the latest exhibitions that inspired her most (photography of Miroslav Tichy and paintings of Seurat). “You have to do a lot of things in order to be a good photographer” she said, “You need to be observant, you need to read, you need to be curious and be inspired by things”.

When our meeting was over I walked down the carpeted spacious hallways of Turbeville’s building thinking about what it meant to be a good photographer. I was thinking about her images, that didn’t seem to belong to this world. I stepped outside and beautiful summer sunset filled the streets. I could never have known that this would never happen again.

Turbeville died on October 24^th 2013.

By Masha Froliak

The post Last Meeting with Deborah Turbeville appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

In the events of WWII Belarus lost a quarter of its population and many villages still remain wastelands. There are still some gaps left over between what can’t be said and what hasn’t been understood or properly reflected on. Sergei Loznitsa, Belarus born, tries to bridge those gaps and makes us do exactly what we don’t want to do—be enclosed in a nightmarish existential reality where human nature is examined and stripped down to bare bones.

Similar to some of the most important historical films, which have often not been very pleasing or comfortable, Loznitsa’s In the Fog is hard to swallow. Based on the novel by Belarusian writer Vasil Bykov, the film takes place in German occupied Belarus during the year 1942. A wrongly accused man, Sushenya (Vladimir Svirski) accepts his doomed fate and readily takes on a journey with his would-be executioners Burov (Vlad Abashin) and Voityk (Sergei Kolesov). Walking forlornly through the woods, they are looking for a place to carry out the sentence when Burov is suddenly shot and Voityk flees for safety.

Fate, humanity, and free will are being questioned throughout the entire film in which Sergei Loznitsa seems to relate war as an external factor produced by internal conditions. In the beautiful visual choreography of Romanian cinematographer Oleg Mutu, the vastness of the forest with all its hidden dangers and thickening fog only reflect the uncertainty and helplessness of characters’ position. It is at this point that Sushenya chooses to stay with wounded Burov and carries him on his shoulders, making a vivid allusion to Christ carrying his cross.

Unlike most war films that would incorporate battle scenes and crowds of actors, Loznitsa manages to reveal a humanistic tragedy set to the background of war, using only three main characters. With occasional flashbacks to their past, the director penetrates into their human behavior in a Dostoevsky-like fashion. Sushenya, who fails to persuade anyone, including his wife of his innocence, is left with a single question; “how is a human being able to change so fast?” All the fever of hesitation, unease, and suspicion in the air make the choices of Loznitsa’s characters ever more poignant and dramatic.

By Masha Froliak

Masha also had a chance to conduct an interview with Sergei Loznitsa about the film:

Masha Froliak: War, or outer and inner destruction are common subjects for many of your works. Why?

Sergei Loznitsa: There is something personal in it and perhaps it doesn’t only concern me, but others as well. Something very significant was broken and it is sad. I want to get back to that point of rupture, to understand what happened or at least to re-live that experience.

MF: How important is a re-thinking of the past in your work?

SL: I wouldn’t say re-thinking, I would say understanding of the past. Then the question is–is it important to understand anything at all about ourselves? Everything that connects us to the past exists in our present. Time doesn’t move linearly towards the events in our lives. Certain problems freeze unresolved; and even though the situation itself belongs to the past it may still trouble us with its uncertainty in the present. In order to understand what happens in the present we need to look again at those events of the past where our current condition stays still, awaiting that resolving effort.

MF: Do you think that the whole tragedy of war can be portrayed with just three actors?

SL: The whole tragedy of war can’t be portrayed with any film. One can only portray a short personal evidence in the background of this larger catastrophe.

MF: Your documentaries are so visually beautiful that they seem staged and your feature film In the Fog seems almost too realistic. Where is the boundary between history and fantasy?

SL: Everything in cinema is a fantasy. And what is most interesting is that it is a fantasy of the viewer. You say it is too realistic however it is not clear what that means exactly. Any film is staged. I chose a location, a subject, and I place a camera. Everything the camera records is evidence of what happens in front of it. After which begins a fantasy and a variety of interpretations, which creators of the film think they are able to control.

MF: Please tell your thoughts about the last scene when the main character makes his final decision.

SL: I don’t have thoughts regarding the last scene. It is a story, a story that ends that way. Why does it end this way? What is the story about? That’s what a viewer should think about.

MF: Are you fully satisfied with any of your films?

SL: So far I have been lucky. I have always been satisfied with my works. Sometimes this feeling comes with time. As Volodya Golovnitskyi, a sound producer I work with said, “If you don’t like the film, watch it again.”

MF: Are you currently working on a new film and what is it going to be about?

SL: At the moment I am working on a short documentary and preparing for a feature film. It will be called “ Babyn Yar.“  It is a film about the tragic events that happened in the fall of Kiev in 1941.

The post Loznitsa’s In the Fog and an Interview with the Director appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

As Marquise de Merteuil and Valmont appear on stage to play their manipulative games of love, we soon find out that they do not leave when the scene changes. Instead, together with the rest of the characters, they remain on stage and observe each other throughout the performance. This visual transparency gives an interesting twist to the plot where secrecy and characters’ hidden motifs are prevalent. The director’s choice of actors is surprising and unexpected as Marquise, played by Julie Moulier, is mannish, Cecile (Agathe Le Bourdonnec) is too infantile, and Valmont (Yannik Landrein) lacks any originality. The weapon of their virtuosic cruel games in Malkovitch’s re-envision is not hand written letters as in Choderlos de Laclos’ original novel, but text messages and emails on Ipads and cellphones.

In the minimalist settings of Pierre-Francois Limbosch, the bed is the main component of the play and is shifted around the stage by the main characters as the scenes change. The peeling walls are set against the Romanesque columns, which at the duel scene turn into trees, and add deconstructive element to the aristocratic household. The costume design by Mina Ly seems to perfectly match the setting where Marquise is stripped from a full skirt and Valmond strolls in jeans instead of wearing court dresses that are so natural for 18^th century.

Adapted for the stage by Christopher Hampton, who was also a screenwriter for the film by Stephen Frears, there are only minor changes made to the script. Consistent with the text and all its dialogues, the play also borrows some visual elements from the film. In the 2 hour 35 minute duration of Dangerous Liasons, which is performed in French with English supertitles, there seems to be an abundance of text with very little expressiveness. Often the lines are rushed through without a single pause, which gives the audience no time to read the subtitles or to concentrate on the actors.  All the beauty of the film where what is being said is as much important as what is not being said, all the moments of silence, and the way the characters communicated with meaningful and sensual eye contact – all of this escaped the direction of John Malkovitch.

The duel scene between Vicomte de Valmont and Chevalier Danceny, being one of the most tragic moments of the play, is without a doubt the most compelling and beautifully staged scenes. The audience finds themselves in the darkness with only strokes of flashlight illuminating the fatal encounter of the two, the music composed by Nicolas Errera adding a rhythmic intensity to the fight. Some artistic decisions of the play Dangerous Liasons are imaginative and clear, and provide an attempt to give a new perspective to Choderlos de Laclos’ novel. However, it seems that the modern interpretation by John Malkovitch brings nothing new to this controversial tale of seduction, perversity, and lust.

By Masha Froliak

The post John Malkovitch’s Modern Interpretation of Dangerous Liasons appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

In the midst of nineteen commercial buildings of Rockefeller Center, scattered between 49th to 50th street, stand nine unique human figures of Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. Human Nature, the latest site specific creation of the artist, is built of massive bluestone slabs piled on top of each other into forms which resemble human figures. The contrast between the archaic primitive figures that are 16 to 20 foot tall and the industrially developed surroundings of the Plaza is dramatic and intriguing.

Rockefeller Center, known for its tradition of presenting public art, temporarily seized its art program for several years. Rondinone’s Human Nature, organized by Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer, is the first exhibition to continue the established tradition again. While the stone figures that weight up to 15 tons each were being installed at the Plaza I had a chance to have a brief chat with the artist.

“I wanted to bring to this space something that would slow people down” says the artist, “something in contrast to high technology, something more primitive”. While Ugo Rondinone has done several other public art installations including a rainbow neon-lit sign sculpture Hell, Yes! that adorned the New Museum, his work is always delightful in its simplicity and contemplative nature. “Public art has to be simple” says Ugo, “this simplicity can be achieved by merely bringing two forces together – humanity and nature. I wanted to show how they are dependent on each other”.

Investigating the human-nature relationship once again in his new exhibition, the artist doesn’t compete with the surrounding tall buildings, but rather orders the space positioning the figures in what seems to be a haphazard arrangement. The composition of where the figures are placed creates a tangible sense of movement. His public art doesn’t alienate, doesn’t cause provocations, but rather aims at uniting people by embracing them with something universal.

Relating primitive and contemporary experiences, or natural and artificial environments, Ugo Rondinone superimposes different realities. “My motifs are coming from a Romantic historical era” says the artist, “the period when imagination and dreams would be addressed and realized in an aesthetic way”.

Human Nature, now on view through June 7, invites the public to wander around the mythic, timeless figures and to reconnect ourselves with our ancient roots. The installation adds beautifully to the historic architecture and the overall dynamics of Rockefeller Center.

The post Ugo Rondinone’s Human Nature with Public Art Fund appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.