November 10, 2010

The Marriage of Figaro: Anne Colvin and I find a way in (Part 2)

I don’t drink coffee, so let’s have a beer… My posts are always collaborations and are presented in two parts. Part 1 is a summary of a shared experience with my collaborator(s). Part 2 is a response often in the form of a project created specifically for this blog.


In response to conversations after attending SF Opera’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, this project reflects our desire to “find a way in” to the production from multiple vantage points. Figaro was a springboard for the creation of this exquisite-corpse collage. Our blog entry has become the seed of an idea for potential collaboration in the future.

The Rabbit of Seville, Warner Brothers, 1949. The Marriage of Figaro was originally written as part of a trilogy of plays by Pierre Beaumarchais: The Barber of Seville, Figaro (1784), and The Guilty Mother.

Furnished apartment at Trump Tower. Love on the 52nd Floor. Peter Sellars’s 1990 production of The Marriage of Figaro was staged on a set inspired by Trump Tower. Thank God the feudal system remains firmly in place in the United States of America in the ’90s. Peter Sellars in the NY Times.

“Uncluttered and unpretentious,” Scottish Opera’s 2010 staging of The Marriage of Figaro.

Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Columbia Pictures, 2006.

Annie Leibovitz for Vogue, September 2006 (cover and two shots).

A contemporary romantic … Fashion designer John Galliano and models, Harper’s Bazaar, March 2007.

Trailer for Sally Potter’s rendition of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, 1992. In honor of The Marriage of Figaro’s character Cherubin — a beautiful boy played by a beautiful girl, who disguises himself as a beautiful girl.

Trailer for Milos Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus. In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Nietzsche rejoices that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “the last chord of a centuries-old great European taste, … still speaks to us” and warns that “alas, some day all this will be gone.” –writes Fred Bauman, The Weekly Standard, 2006.

Buona sera!

Anne & Meg

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