Theatre includes Medicine ( Traverse / Galway / NYC ); Grief is the Thing with Feathers ( Barbican / O'Reilly / Galway / NYC); Arlington ( Galway / Abbey / NYC); Ballyturk (Galway/ Abbey / Lyttleton, NT/ NYC); Misterman (Galway / NYC / Lyttleton, NT), Knives in Hens ( Perth ); Bondagers (Edinburgh Lyceum); Khandan (Royal Court); Ravens ( Hampstead ); Have Your Circumstances Changed? ( Artangel ); Mass Observation (Almeida); Happy Days ( Olympia, Dublin ); Woyzeck in Winter ( Galway / Barbican); Opera includes The First Child, The Second Violinist, The Last Hotel ( Irish National Opera & Landmark ); Bluebeard's Castle ( Olympia ); La traviata (Malmo); Ariadne auf Naxos (Salzburg ); Carmen (Lisbon)The Queen of Spades, Ariadne auf Naxos (La Scala ); Eugene Onegin (Strasbourg); L'isola disabitata ( ROH ) ; also productions in Valencia, Cagliari, Marseille & Naples ; Film includes The Last Hotel (Sky)

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Production Title: Ariadne auf Naxos

 

Role: Set and costume designer

 

Production Response

The design for the production focused on the pressure and isolation imposed on Ariadne's life as an operatic diva performing to an invisible audience, within the rarefied atmosphere of a vast, anechoic chamber, totally shielded from the outside world except for a large observation window high up in the back wall. Her island is formed by a raised oval platform sitting within a sea of blue cones, out of which the nymphs rise up. At one point, the lid of the platform slowly closes, rising up behind the sleeping Ariadne, evoking Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. She descends on a lift, the lid closing over her. Zerbinetta later approaches and leans against the sealed platform, before using it as her own performance stage.

 

Year: April 2019

Location/Venue: La Scala, Milan

 

Credits

Company: La Scala, Milan

Composer: Richard Strauss

Director: Frederic Wake-Walker

Lighting designer: Marco Filibeck

Video designer: Sylwester Luczak

Photo credit: Jamie Vartan