As an avid fan of cinema, it’s perhaps a happy coincidence that I was fortunate to have an opportunity to design sets for a series of operas being staged by William Friedkin - the Oscar winning film director who made The French Connection and The Exorcist back in the 1970s.
Our collaboration began with designs for Richard Wagner’s Tannhauser. The creative process was very visual; we looked at hundreds of images for inspiration, including the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. I constructed each scene with a series of physical models, which were used to discuss the staging of each of the elaborate dance sequences and orchestration with the production team.
Unfortunately the planned production of Tannhauser was cancelled due to a strike by the dancers’ union. In its place, Friedkin decided to stage another production - Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos - a comical opera with no elaborate dance sequence. Like Tannhauser, the staging of the two major scenes were studied with physical models. The first scene took place in a ‘modern’ residence (image on left); and the second scene on a ‘desert’ island (image on right).
We worked closely with the in-house fabrication shop at LA Opera to produce the sets. Based on the computer model we provided, the team at the LA Opera shop devised a modular steel scaffolding system to support the complex surfaces demanded by our design.
The complex geometries exhibited by the sets were rendered smoothly at full-scale using canvas and painted foam finished to look like plaster or metal. I was pleasantly surprised when one singer told me that the sets’ convex surfaces also had wonderful acoustical qualities.
Lighting also played an important role in making the sets come alive. Through collaboration with the lighting designers at LA Opera, we managed to ensure that the sets achieved a painterly quality reminiscent of the work of Giorgio de Chirico.
The process of collaborating with Friedkin was very much like storyboarding a narrative - it was about creating an appropriate backdrop and context to promote the unfolding drama of human interactions.
The projects in this section were designed and executed during my time at Gehry Partners LLP (the office). I am grateful to Mr. Gehry and the team at the office for their generosity and support over the years. All intellectual property rights of these projects continue to be owned by the office unless otherwise mentioned. The narrative texts on the projects are entirely personal, they do not represent the views or opinions of the office, its clients or any other third party or organization.