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| Curtain Call with Proscenium |
La Boheme, an opera in four acts was composed by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on the novel Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger was produced in Winter Semester, 2015 In the Snow Drama Theatre at Brigham Young University-Idaho.
Synopsis
Act I: The Garrett Apartment
Rodolfo, Marcello, Colline and Schaunard are young, struggling Bohemians who share a flat in the Montmartre District in Paris during the Art Nouveau period. Rodolfo is burning the pages of his manuscript in the stove for warmth. Schaunard arrives with money because he has just received a commission from a rich eccentric who paid him to play his violin until his parrot died.
Benoit, the landlord arrives and demands the rent. As they prepare to pay him the rent, the Bohemians ply him with wine and get him drunk. Benoit becomes talkative in his tipsy state and talks about his mistress and then admits he is married. The boys, in mock indignation blackmail him for the rent money and threaten to tell his wife about the mistress. Benoit leaves in humiliation and defeat.
Schaunard suggests that they all use the rent money to join him at Cafe Momus to celebrate their good fortune. All leave except Rodolfo. As he is preparing to leave, he hears a knock at the door and Mimi, a girl who also lives in the building it there. Her candle has gone out and she has no matches. He helps her and they both realize they have fallen in love.
Act II: Cafe Momus in the Montmartre District
The scene starts out on the street in front of Cafe Momus where a great crowd has gathered. Everybody is buying and selling and watching street performers. Our gang enters Cafe Momus and orders food. Musetta, Marcello's ex-girlfriend arrives with her Sugar Daddy who is a government minister. It is clear she is tired of her wealthy boyfriend. She torments the boyfriend by singing a very risque song in front of the crowd. On the one hand, she is tormenting her lover and on the other, she is trying to get Marcello's attention.
After the song, she gets rid of Alcindoro, the sugar daddy, by telling him her shoe is too tight and asks him to take it to the shoemaker to have it stretched a bit. He leaves and she joins up with Marcello and the gang.
When they are ready to leave, Schaunard discovers that his purse is gone and they have no way to pay for the meal. Such is the life for young Bohemians. Musetta hatches a plan and tells the head waiter to give the bill to Alcindoro when he returns. They leave, Alcindoro returns, the head waiter hands him the bill, he pays it and sits down, dejected.
Act III: At the City Gate
Mimi finds Marcello. She is very ill. She tells him that Rodolfo left her the night before because of his terrible jealousy. Marcello tells her that Rodolfo is asleep inside the tavern. Rodolfo comes out of the tavern and Mimi hides.
Marcello confronts him about leaving Mimi and Rodolfo at first lies and says she is too flirtatious and he is jealous. But then he finally tells the truth and tells Marcello that Mimi is very sick and he thinks it is consumption. Because he is a poor starving artist, he cannot care for her and he thought if he were mean to her she would leave and find a rich man who was better able to care for her. He was mean to her because of his great love for her. Understand that this was written during the Romantic Period.
Mimi is revealed by her coughing and weeping. Rodolfo and Mimi agree to stay together until spring.
Act IV: The Garrett Apartment
In the spring, both Musetta and Mimi have left their lovers to find wealthier gentlemen to take care of them. Mimi has found a Viscount. Musetta suddenly appears and tells of Mimi's condition, which is worse. She found Mimi earlier that day and Mimi asked her to take her to Rodolfo. Mimi is assisted to a bed where everyone tries to comfort her.
Knowing that Rodolfo and Mimi would like to be alone, everyone else leaves and they sing love songs to each other. The others return and bring a fur muff for Mimi's hands. She thanks them. Things happen and after awhile, Musetta discovers that Mimi has died. The curtain closes with Rodolfo crying out her name in distress, because Melodrama.
Concept
Richard Clifford, the director suggested at the very first that the designers should look to the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for inspiration.
Lautrec was an artist, printmaker, caricaturist and illustrator in the Montmartre District in Paris during it's impressionistic heyday. He was a contemporary with Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. He is famous for his posters made for the Moulin-Rouge.
As I studied Toulouse-Lautrec's work I came to see that the subject matter in his paintings and posters and illustrations were almost always depicted with great detail, and as the painting moved away from the subject matter, the focus softened and the detail faded to the edges of the composition where it devolved into pencil lines.
Here are some examples linked from the Wikipedia page on Toulouse-Lautrec
The Englishman at the Moulin-Rouge
Wadsworth Antheneum
Jane Avril
Divan Japonais
Quadrille
Each of these, and hundreds more, show the quality I was looking for in the Toulouse-Lautrec paintings. The subject in focus and the focus becoming softer as the work got further and further away from it. Ultimately ending in just pencil lines.
The Design:
Camilla Martinez assisted me on this scene design. I tasked her with creating a design for the false proscenium which was to be reminiscent of Art Nouveau styling. We used the green because of the green metro station entrances in Paris. Camilla assisted on the rest of the design as well.
There were three locations we needed to design. The garret apartment, Montmartre and the Cafe Momus, and the city gate. For Act IV they came back to the garret.
Since the whole show is situated around Montmartre, I decided to paint a drop with the Sacre Coeur Basilica on the hill in the background. Richard Clifford, the director asked if we could paint it translucently with a sunrise effect that would light up at the end of Act III. I assured him we could.
A garret is an apartment basically created in the attic of a building. For the garret I imagined they were living in a room in the corner of a building with a mansard roof. Because of that, the back wall and the side wall sloped inward. This gave us a sense of the cramped conditions these young men were living in. On the Snow Drama Theatre stage, there are two trap doors in the floor and we used one of them to create the illusion that we were up on the top floor of a building. Benoit and several others entered from that location. I found a couple of thumbnails for Acts I and IV which will be shown below.
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| Garret apartment with Sacre Coeur in the background. Note the bent walls stage right and rear |
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| Garret apartment with translucent back |
I also designed some modular wagon pieces that could be reconfigured for each act. They were part of the hallway and stairs in the building in Act I and IV, they were the promenade for Act II and they became part of the stairs and wall for Act III.
Act II is challenging to design. It takes place simultaneously inside and outside. The promenade where the businesses are and the interior of Cafe Momus. I also designed the exterior of Cafe Momus which then flew out as they entered. Cafe Momus was stage right and the promenade was stage left. I will describe each of these in greater detail and the choices that were made and why a little later in this post. Here is a thumbnail of Act II.
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| Exterior of Cafe Momus with the promenade on stage left |
Act III needed a tavern and the city gate. This was also the act that would have the sunrise effect on the scenic backdrop.
With each of these locations, thinking of the Toulouse-Latrec artwork, I decided that like his work, where the subject was I would place the most detail. The further away from the subject it would lose focus and ultimately devolve into 'pencil lines.' In the area on each wall that was closest to the actors, I designed solid walls made of luan. The walls were cutaway and above the cutaway I designed a layer of taupe gauze over scrim. The gauze layer cutaway and at the top was just the scrim layer. The luan was painted fairly tight and realistically. The gauze less so and the scrim was painted with just Van Dyke Brown to appear like pencil or charcoal lines. I found some of my paint elevations that illustrate this effect.
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| Bar for Cafe Momus. The base coat on the left with just linework was chosen to replicate the paper Toulouse-Latrec used to draw and paint on. |
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| City walls and promenade platforms |
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| Garret floor |
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| City gate |
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| Cafe Momus. The part at the bottom is luan where the most detail is. Where the washy paint line is just below the Cafe Momus sign is represents the gauze. Everything above that line was painted on scrim. |
In the garret, in the areas closest to the actors we used a stencil for wallpaper and painted it fairly tightly. As we moved up the wall into the gauze, the stencil was painted more loosely and at the top of the gauze we introduced the Van Dyke Brown to represent pencil lines. The wallpaper stencil gave way and the Van Dyke Brown was hand painted in a loose style until it reached the top of the walls. The floor and the stairs had a similar treatment where they were painted with detail closest to the action and less detail the further away from the action.
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| Act I, garret apartment. |
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| Another view with Sacre Coeur in the background |
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| Detail that shows the progression of pencil lines |
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| I put this photo in because my good friend played Benoit and I wanted a picture of him in this post. He is a music faculty member. I haven't asked his permission to use his name, so if it comes to that I may edit it in to this blog post. |
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| This details the paint job on the windows which were purposely non-realistic |
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| I figured we needed at least one picture from Act IV. This one also shows how the paint runs out on the steps away from the action. One might look at Toulose-Lautrec's work and say it was all unfinished. But because he painted in this way so often it is obvious to me that it was intentional. As it was with our show. |
Act II: Cafe Momus and the Promenade
The act started out with the exterior of Cafe Momus flown in stage right. It was only on for a few moments to establish the location. It flew out to reveal the interior. Since this was written during the impressionistic time period, I didn't feel compelled to have a hard boundary between the interior space and the exterior space. Ray Versluys, the lighting designer saw to that. Both the interior and the exterior were designed and painted with the same convention. Closest to the people it was more realistic and the further away from people the less focused it became, finally terminating in 'pencil line.'
The Promenade followed the same convention with the exception that we didn't use gauze or scrim since they were foundational pieces that needed to be walked and danced upon. For the balustrade on the promenade, I designed full round balusters for the middle section where most of the action would take place, and then replaced them with flat profile cut out balusters away from the action. The round balusters were painted realistically and the flat ones emphasized the 'pencil line' convention we had established.
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| The only photo I have of the exterior of Cafe Momus. Sad because it was painted very well. |
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| Detail of the balustrade. Note the balusters upstage of the stairs are full round but the balusters downstage of the stairs are flat, cut-out profiles painted with 'pencil lines' |
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| There were "businesses" shown along the promenade. Flown flats covered in gauze and scrim. The boutique is shown here |
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| Musetta singing on the bar. 'Pencil line' woodgrain above her head |
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| Cafe Momus side of the stage |
Act III: The City Gate
The most important part about this scene was the backdrop sunrise. Most of the scene takes place during a snowstorm in the very early morning. The snow ends and the sun rises and the lovers are triumphant.
The paint job on the fence that surrounds the city was green, except at the very top, it faded to the same colors as the paper Toulouse-Lautrec painted and sketched on. To keep with the motif that the closer to the subjects the more in focus the scenery and the further away from the people the less focused it became.
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| The city gate. As with everything else, focus shifts the further away from the people it gets. Environmental effect with snow. Try singing opera with that! |
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| This image shows the paint job on the backdrop |
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| Sunbeams through the Sacre Coeur |
This scene design consisted of wagons and flown pieces, often working together. That meant every scene change had to be perfect in order for the flown pieces to line up with the wagons. This was especially true in Act III when a flown piece with a door had to sandwich between two wagons.
I didn't always like working on opera. I have had a few colleagues over the years, including Richard Clifford and Jon Linford who have introduced me to the possibilities of opera as an artform. I quite like working on opera now. This one was a pleasure to design.
Production Details
Director: Richard Clifford
Musical Director: David Olsen
Conductor: David Olsen
Scene Designer: Gary Benson
Assistant Scene Designer: Camilla Martinez
Costume Designer: Kathie Schmid
Lighting Designer: Ray Versluys
Sound Designer: Antonia Clifford
Technical Director: Ray Versluys
Costume Shop Director: Patty Randall
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