Christopher Alden (director)
Encyclopedia
Christopher Alden is a radical theater director known for staging revisionist productions of opera. He is the twin brother of David Alden, also an opera director, and belongs to a generation of modernist directors that includes Robert Wilson
and Peter Sellars
, though Alden retains his own personal style.
, and their mother was the Broadway dancer Barbara Gaye. As such, the brothers were drawn to musical theater from an early age. As eight-year-olds, they listened to recordings of Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, and as teenagers in the mid-'60s, they frequently bought standing room tickets at the Metropolitan Opera
. By age 13, both had decided they wanted to be directors of opera.
Christopher studied theater at the University of Pennsylvania and began his stage career as an actor, appearing in Joseph Papp
’s New York Shakespeare Festival
production of Two Gentlemen of Verona
in the early ‘70s. But he was soon apprenticed to opera director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
, working as his assistant in Houston, Paris and Salzburg. In 1974, Alden staged his first opera productions in New York (Francis Poulenc
's Les mamelles de Tirésias
) and Omaha (La Traviata
and The Barber of Seville
). More assignments followed during the 1970s at Santa Fe Opera
, Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Dallas Opera
as well as a continuing relationship with Opera Omaha
.
at the Long Beach Opera
to mount a conventional staging of La Boheme
. However, the following year saw a surreal production of Benjamin Britten
's Death in Venice
that was a critical and artistic breakthrough for both Alden and Long Beach Opera. Los Angeles Times
music critic Martin Bernheimer
wrote that "Alden tells the story with shadows and hints... Guided by the music, he uses people as scenery and ideas as costumes. To illustrate the central philosophical conflicts between Apollo and Dionysus, the director introduces daring images unimagined by the composer and librettist."
Alden continued a long and fruitful collaboration with Long Beach Opera that yielded some unconventional settings of Claudio Monteverdi
's Coronation of Poppea
, Orfeo
and The Return of Ulysses
; Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia; Jacques Offenbach
's La vie parisienne
and Bluebeard
and the world premiere of Stewart Wallace
and Michael Korie
's Hopper’s Wife.
In the early '90s, he began a similarly long relationship with the San Francisco Opera
, staging the American premieres of Aribert Reimann
's Ghost Sonata
and Hans Werner Henze
's Das Verratene Meer
as well as new productions of Les Contes d'Hoffmann
, Coronation of Poppea, Virgil Thomson
's The Mother of Us All
and Wallace & Korie's Harvey Milk.
He made his debut with New York City Opera
as early as 1979 with a staging of Gioachino Rossini's Le comte Ory
and went on to create productions for NYCO and Glimmerglass Opera
that included Handel
's Imeneo
, The Rape of Lucretia, The Mother of Us All, Bluebeard, The Italian Girl in Algiers
, John Philip Sousa
's The Glass Blowers, Mozart's Don Giovanni
. He is currently working on a new production of Leonard Bernstein
's A Quiet Place
scheduled to make its New York premiere in October 2010.
Alden has worked with several major and regional American opera companies, including Lyric Opera of Chicago
, Houston Grand Opera
, Seattle Opera
, Boston Lyric Opera
, Pittsburgh Opera
, Dallas Opera
and Los Angeles Opera
. He created the world premiere production of Anthony Davis
' Tania at Philadelphia's American Music Theater Festival in 1992. He mounted Jonathan Dove
's reduced versions of Das Rheingold
and Die Walküre
for the Eos Orchestra of New York in 2002-2004. For the Spoleto Festival USA
, he produced the American premiere of Gluck
's L’Ile de Merlin in 2007.
His work in Europe has encompassed assignments at Welsh National Opera
, Scottish Opera
(where he directed the world premiere of David Horne
's Friend of the People), English National Opera
(staging The Makropulos Case with Charles Mackerras
in 2006). He and British director David Pountney
co-directed Eight Little Greats, an acclaimed series of eight short operas for Opera North
in 2005. Alden has also worked at the Opéra Comique in Paris (where he presented a triple bill of Georges Bizet
's Djamileh
, Le docteur Miracle
and Don Procopio
), Cologne Opera, Opera Zuid in The Netherlands as well as in Bilbao, Antwerp, Mannheim and Geneva.
. He likened his own 1984 production of Coronation of Poppea to "a new wave rock video" and has frequently expressed his desire to connect the inner world of opera theater to the modern sensibility of a younger audience. He has an eye for bold theatrical gestures that are often dramatically effective but sometimes considered crass. His use of overt sexuality, brutal violence and over-the-top, satirical humor has soured his relationship with conservative patrons (most notably, a critically derided Rigoletto
production for Chicago Lyric that the company declared un-"revivable").
Though some opera audiences may be put off by his art, it is never Alden’s aim to shock for the sake of shock value. Rather, his approach to stagecraft — with its anachronistic cultural symbols, blood-and-guts characterizations and eye-catching visuals — is driven by a desire to reveal how powerfully opera stories can resonate with modern experience. Alden has said that "however fascinating the era in which an opera was composed may be, I have a primary responsibility to the world we live in now."
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
and Peter Sellars
Peter Sellars
Peter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays...
, though Alden retains his own personal style.
Early life
Alden and his identical twin David came from a show business family. Their father was the playwright Jerome AldenJerome Alden
Jerome Alden was an American playwright and screenwriter for television and documentary films. He was born in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from the University of Oregon. He wrote the one-man play Bully, about Theodore Roosevelt, and the book for the musical Teddy & Alice, which was also about...
, and their mother was the Broadway dancer Barbara Gaye. As such, the brothers were drawn to musical theater from an early age. As eight-year-olds, they listened to recordings of Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, and as teenagers in the mid-'60s, they frequently bought standing room tickets at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
. By age 13, both had decided they wanted to be directors of opera.
Christopher studied theater at the University of Pennsylvania and began his stage career as an actor, appearing in Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. Papp established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in downtown New York . "The Public," as it is known, has many small theatres within it...
’s New York Shakespeare Festival
New York Shakespeare Festival
New York Shakespeare Festival is the previous name of the New York City theatrical producing organization now known as the Public Theater. The Festival produced shows at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, as part of its free Shakespeare in the Park series, at the Public Theatre near Astor Place...
production of Two Gentlemen of Verona
Two Gentlemen of Verona (musical)
Two Gentlemen of Verona is a rock musical, with a book by John Guare and Mel Shapiro, lyrics by Guare and music by Galt MacDermot, based on the Shakespeare comedy of the same name....
in the early ‘70s. But he was soon apprenticed to opera director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle was a noted French opera director.-Biography:Ponnelle was born in Paris. He studied philosophy, art, and history there and, in 1952, began his career in Germany as a theatre designer for Hans Werner Henze's opera Boulevard Solitude...
, working as his assistant in Houston, Paris and Salzburg. In 1974, Alden staged his first opera productions in New York (Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
's Les mamelles de Tirésias
Les mamelles de Tirésias
Les mamelles de Tirésias is a surrealist two-act opéra bouffe by Francis Poulenc, based on the play of the same title by Guillaume Apollinaire, which was written in 1903 but first performed in 1917...
) and Omaha (La Traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
and The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
). More assignments followed during the 1970s at Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
, Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Dallas Opera
Dallas Opera
The Dallas Opera is an opera company located in Dallas, Texas . The company was founded in 1957 as the Dallas Civic Opera by Laurence Kelly and Nicolà Rescigno, both of whom had been active with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the first as administrator, the second as artistic director.-The company's...
as well as a continuing relationship with Opera Omaha
Opera Omaha
Opera Omaha is an opera company in Omaha, Nebraska. It is well known for premiering Wakonda's Dream, a contemporary opera about Native Americans set in the Niobrara....
.
Directing career
In 1982, he was engaged by Michael MilenskiMichael Milenski
Victor Michael Milenski founded the Long Beach Opera in 1979, and was its general director for 25 seasons, retiring in 2004...
at the Long Beach Opera
Long Beach Opera
Long Beach Opera is a Southern California opera company serving the greater Los Angeles and Orange County metroplex. Founded in 1979, it is the oldest established professional opera company in the L.A. area...
to mount a conventional staging of La Boheme
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
. However, the following year saw a surreal production of Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's Death in Venice
Death in Venice (opera)
Death in Venice is an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, his last. The opera is based on the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Myfanwy Piper wrote the English libretto. It was first performed at Snape Maltings near Aldeburgh, England on 16 June 1973.The astringent score is marked by some...
that was a critical and artistic breakthrough for both Alden and Long Beach Opera. Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
music critic Martin Bernheimer
Martin Bernheimer
Martin Bernheimer is an American music critic. He studied at Brown University and the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, along with the famous musicologist Gustave Reese at New York University....
wrote that "Alden tells the story with shadows and hints... Guided by the music, he uses people as scenery and ideas as costumes. To illustrate the central philosophical conflicts between Apollo and Dionysus, the director introduces daring images unimagined by the composer and librettist."
Alden continued a long and fruitful collaboration with Long Beach Opera that yielded some unconventional settings of Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
's Coronation of Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello...
, Orfeo
Orfeo
L'Orfeo , sometimes called L'Orfeo, favola in musica, is an early Baroque opera by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to...
and The Return of Ulysses
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera in a prologue and five acts , set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season...
; Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia; Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's La vie parisienne
La vie parisienne
La vie parisienne is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects...
and Bluebeard
Barbe-bleue
Barbe-bleue is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, in three acts by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy based on Charles Perrault's 1697 story.-Performance history:...
and the world premiere of Stewart Wallace
Stewart Wallace
Stewart Wallace is an American composer and cantor. He has spent much of his career composing experimental operas, from the dance-centered Kabbalah to the surrealist Hopper's Wife...
and Michael Korie
Michael Korie
Michael Korie is an American librettist and lyricist. Korie's works include Grey Gardens , Harvey Milk and The Grapes of Wrath . He also wrote the lyrics to Doctor Zhivago Michael Korie (born Michael Cory Indick) is an American librettist and lyricist. Korie's works include Grey Gardens...
's Hopper’s Wife.
In the early '90s, he began a similarly long relationship with the San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
, staging the American premieres of Aribert Reimann
Aribert Reimann
Aribert Reimann is a German opera composer, pianist and accompanist, known especially for his literary operas. His version of King Lear was written at the suggestion of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who sang the title role....
's Ghost Sonata
Ghost Sonata
Ghost Sonata can refer to:* The Ghost Sonata , a play by August Strindberg* The Ghost Sonata, Die Gespenstersonate, a 1984 libretto by Aribert Reimann...
and Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
's Das Verratene Meer
Das verratene Meer
Das verratene Meer is an opera in two parts and 14 scenes, with music by Hans Werner Henze to a German libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel, after Yukio Mishima's novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea...
as well as new productions of Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Les contes d'Hoffmann
Les contes d'Hoffmann is an opéra by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on short stories by E. T. A...
, Coronation of Poppea, Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
's The Mother of Us All
The Mother of Us All
The Mother of Us All is an opera by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein. It chronicles the life of Susan B. Anthony, one of the major figures in the fight for women's suffrage in the United States...
and Wallace & Korie's Harvey Milk.
He made his debut with New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
as early as 1979 with a staging of Gioachino Rossini's Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory is an opéra written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera Il viaggio a Reims written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X...
and went on to create productions for NYCO and Glimmerglass Opera
Glimmerglass Opera
Glimmerglass Festival is an opera company which was founded in 1975 by Peter Macris and presents an annual season of operas at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on Otsego Lake eight miles north of Cooperstown, New York, United States.The summer-only season usually consists of four operas performed in...
that included Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Imeneo
Imeneo
Imeneo is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Silvio Stampiglia's Imeneo. Handel had begun composition in September 1738, but did not complete the score until 1740...
, The Rape of Lucretia, The Mother of Us All, Bluebeard, The Italian Girl in Algiers
L'italiana in Algeri
L'italiana in Algeri is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Angelo Anelli, based on his earlier text set by Luigi Mosca...
, John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J....
's The Glass Blowers, Mozart's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
. He is currently working on a new production of Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
's A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place is an American opera in three acts, with music by Leonard Bernstein to a libretto by Stephen Wadsworth. The work is a sequel to Bernstein's 1951 short opera Trouble in Tahiti. In its initial form A Quiet Place was in one act; the premiere, on June 17, 1983, was a double bill: Trouble...
scheduled to make its New York premiere in October 2010.
Alden has worked with several major and regional American opera companies, including Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...
, Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...
, Seattle Opera
Seattle Opera
The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...
, Boston Lyric Opera
Boston Lyric Opera
Boston Lyric Opera is an American opera company based in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1976.Each season, BLO produces three mainstage productions at the Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre in Boston and a fully staged, one-hour English language version of a popular opera for school...
, Pittsburgh Opera
Pittsburgh Opera
Pittsburgh Opera is an American opera company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is one of two opera companies in the city, the other being Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Opera gives performances in several venues, primarily at the Benedum Center, with other performances at the...
, Dallas Opera
Dallas Opera
The Dallas Opera is an opera company located in Dallas, Texas . The company was founded in 1957 as the Dallas Civic Opera by Laurence Kelly and Nicolà Rescigno, both of whom had been active with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the first as administrator, the second as artistic director.-The company's...
and Los Angeles Opera
Los Angeles Opera
The Los Angeles Opera is an opera company in Los Angeles, California. It is the fourth largest opera company in the United States. The company's home base is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, part of the Los Angeles Music Center.-Current leadership:...
. He created the world premiere production of Anthony Davis
Anthony Davis (composer)
Anthony Davis, better known as Tony Davis , is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.-Biography:...
' Tania at Philadelphia's American Music Theater Festival in 1992. He mounted Jonathan Dove
Jonathan Dove
Jonathan Dove is a British composer of opera, choral works, plays, films, and orchestral and chamber music. He has arranged a number of operas for English Touring Opera and the City of Birmingham Touring Opera , including in 1990 a famous 18-player two-evening adaptation of Wagner's Der Ring des...
's reduced versions of Das Rheingold
Das Rheingold
is the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
and Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
for the Eos Orchestra of New York in 2002-2004. For the Spoleto Festival USA
Spoleto Festival USA
Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, is one of the world's major performing arts festivals. It was founded in 1977 by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who sought to establish a counterpart to the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy...
, he produced the American premiere of Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
's L’Ile de Merlin in 2007.
His work in Europe has encompassed assignments at 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...
, Scottish Opera
Scottish Opera
Scottish Opera is the national opera company of Scotland, and one of the five national performing arts companies funded by the Scottish Government...
(where he directed the world premiere of David Horne
David Horne (composer)
David Horne is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.A resident composer with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for four years, he has been awarded several commissions...
's Friend of the People), English National Opera
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...
(staging The Makropulos Case with Charles Mackerras
Charles Mackerras
Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...
in 2006). He and British director David Pountney
David Pountney
David Pountney is a British theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works...
co-directed Eight Little Greats, an acclaimed series of eight short operas for Opera North
Opera North
Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle...
in 2005. Alden has also worked at the Opéra Comique in Paris (where he presented a triple bill of Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
's Djamileh
Djamileh
Djamileh is an opéra comique in one act by Georges Bizet to a libretto by Louis Gallet, based on an oriental tale, Namouna, by Alfred de Musset.-Composition history:...
, Le docteur Miracle
Le docteur Miracle
Le docteur Miracle is an opérette in one act by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto, by Léon Battu and Ludovic Halévy, is based on Sheridan's play Saint Patrick's Day. Bizet wrote the work when he was just 18 years old for a competition organised by Jacques Offenbach. He shared first...
and Don Procopio
Don Procopio
Don Procopio is a two-act opera buffa by Georges Bizet with an Italian libretto completed in 1859, and first performed in 1906.-Background:Bizet spent three years in Italy, 1857 to 1860, as winner of the Prix de Rome...
), Cologne Opera, Opera Zuid in The Netherlands as well as in Bilbao, Antwerp, Mannheim and Geneva.
Modernist Vision
As an opera director, Christopher Alden is known for his use of contemporary imagery and, on occasion, a minimalist visual style, though never as spare as his contemporary Robert WilsonRobert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
. He likened his own 1984 production of Coronation of Poppea to "a new wave rock video" and has frequently expressed his desire to connect the inner world of opera theater to the modern sensibility of a younger audience. He has an eye for bold theatrical gestures that are often dramatically effective but sometimes considered crass. His use of overt sexuality, brutal violence and over-the-top, satirical humor has soured his relationship with conservative patrons (most notably, a critically derided Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
production for Chicago Lyric that the company declared un-"revivable").
Though some opera audiences may be put off by his art, it is never Alden’s aim to shock for the sake of shock value. Rather, his approach to stagecraft — with its anachronistic cultural symbols, blood-and-guts characterizations and eye-catching visuals — is driven by a desire to reveal how powerfully opera stories can resonate with modern experience. Alden has said that "however fascinating the era in which an opera was composed may be, I have a primary responsibility to the world we live in now."