Calixto Bieito
Encyclopedia
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
theater director known for his "radical" interpretations of classic operas.
Biography
Bieito gained perhaps his greatest notoriety with his production of Verdi'sGiuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
for the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
in 2001. He set the first scene of the opera on a split-level set; on the top half, the primary action of the scene (involving the king and his loyal subjects) played out. The conspirators were ranged along the bottom half of the stage, sitting on toilets with their pants around their ankles. Bieito also offered a controversial take on the character of Oscar. In the opening scene, the old judge appears in a wheelchair; Oscar promptly sits on his lap and begins making suggestive movements. And in the great quintet that closes Act III, scene I, Renato and his co-conspirators attempt to drown Oscar in the bathtub.
This production caused a scandal, not only in Barcelona but in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, when it was performed by ENO
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
. Yet Bieito has continued, undaunted. When designing Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
for Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
, he stated that he felt the piece to be about prostitution; champagne, a recurring theme in the operetta, was the hard drug of choice for the characters, and ought to be treated as such. More recently, Bieito's production of Mozart's
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
The Abduction from the Seraglio, designed for the Komische Oper in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, caused a big stir. Here is an excerpt from the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
review of the opera:
"Bassa Selim is lord of a brothel, rather than a harem, and keeps Konstanza on a leash in a cage. Bieito has decided Mozart's opera is about prostitution and the slave trade, and he has hired real hookers to prove it. The opera opens with Osmin using one. He sings his first aria naked in the shower, giving his genitals a good scrub. Later he urinates in a glass and forces Blonde to drink it. Then, while Konstanza sings "Martern aller Arten", he hacks up a whore with a knife, finally offering the soprano a pair of bloodied, severed nipples. No wonder she shoots herself at the end."
Another commentator added his own scathing critique. "Instead of desecrating the human form, we should learn again to revere it. For there is absolutely nothing to gain from the insults hurled at beauty by those—like Calixto Bieito—who cannot bear to look it in the face. Yes, we can neutralize the high ideals of Mozart by pushing his music into the background so that it becomes the mere accompaniment to an inhuman carnival of sex and death. But what do we learn from this? What do we gain, in terms of emotional, spiritual, intellectual, or moral development? Nothing, save anxiety. We should take a lesson from this kind of desecration: in attempting to show us that our human ideals are worthless, it shows itself to be worthless. And when something shows itself to be worthless, it is time to throw it away."
Recently, Bieito presented a new interpretation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
, a coproduction with the Bergen International Festival
Bergen International Festival
Bergen International Festival is an annual international music and cultural festival in Bergen, Norway. The festival is the largest in the Nordic countries in its genre and has a large number of activities in music, dance, literature, visual arts, folklore etc...
in Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
in May 2006 to critical acclaim. The production starred Joel Joan
Joel Joan
Joel Joan is a Spanish Catalan actor, screenwriter and director.He studied drama at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona. He created the theatre company Kràmpack in 1994 and he has been the administrator of Arriska Films since 2000....
and was presented in Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
with translation by Joan Sellent and Anne-Lise Cloetta. He adapted Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
, by Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
, played at Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
's Liceu Theatre
Liceu
The Gran Teatre del Liceu , or simply Liceu in Catalan and Liceo in Spanish, is an opera house on La Rambla in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain...
in late 2006 and at Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
's Teatro Real
Teatro Real
The Teatro Real or simply El Real , is a major opera house located in Madrid, Spain.-History:...
in early 2007, changing the scenography
Scenography
-Usage:Whilst also aligned with the professional practice of the scenographer, it is important to distinguish the individual elements that comprise the 'design' of a performance event from the term 'scenography' which is as an artistic perspective concerning the visual, experiential and spatial...
from a mid-1800 German town to a factory, replacing the soldiers of the story by workers and the drum major by a rocker superstar.
In 2008 he returned to Bergen International Festival with a production of Ibsen's Brand
Brand (play)
Brand is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is a verse tragedy, written in 1865 and first performed in Stockholm on 24 March 1867. Brand was an intellectual play that provoked much original thought....
.
In spite (or because) of the controversy that his productions generally meet with, Bieito continues to be in demand across Europe and to sell out opera houses.
In January 2010, he was appointed as the new Guest Director of the International Arts Festival of Castilla y León for the next two years.
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