Sunday 3 June 2007

TERRY GILLIAM at LA SCALA: Giordano's "Andrea Chénier"


Terry Gilliam will be holding the reigns at La Scala for Umberto Giordano's opera Andrea Chénier which tells the story of the poet guillotined during the French Revolution. Production designer Dante Ferretti who has previously worked with Gilliam will be working on this production. It will have a 10 night run at the Milan theatre.

On the La Scala website, they have this to say about Gilliam's contribution to the 2007-2008 season:
Another work related to Puccini is Andrea Chénier by Giordano, which premiered in the same year as La Bohème (two French settings, two poets as heroes). An opera that ran the risk of being flattened by habit, we have entrusted it to an imaginative, unpredictable director, who has agreed to make his debut at La Scala and in opera: Terry Gilliam, the enfant terrible of the Monty Pythons, of Brazil, of The Adventure of Baron Munchausen. While on the stage part there will be the imprint of Dante Ferretti and Gabriella Pescucci, Liliana Cavani’s “cinematographic” collaborators. It is Gilliam’s first work for the theatre.

Links:
Guardian Unlmited (source)
Teatro Alla Scala (english/italian)
Dreams - Terry Gilliam Fanzine
Umberto Giordano Wiki
Dante Ferretti IMDB
Andrea Chénier Wiki
Andrea Chénier Stanford Univ. Synopsis
Terry Gilliam & the Tide - SiouxWIRE

3 comments:

Betty Carlson said...

I was Terry Gilliam's interpreter when he visited a film festival in Conques about 7 years back. That was a great experience.

Siouxfire said...

Oh Betty, I am desperately trying to find Terry. That must have been a great experience. He seems a genuinely nice person.

Aside from being brilliant, I've always felt a kinship for him being an expat-American "Englishman".

Betty Carlson said...

He was genuinely nice. The best part of the experience was interpreting a private, summer night visit of the historic village just for him. Very memorable.

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