Viktor & Rolf Design Costumes for Opera

Avant-garde Dutch fashion designers Viktor & Rolf—who have a gorgeous new interactive website complete with enchanting musical score—have created costumes for Robert Wilson's adaptation of the romantic opera Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter) by Carl Maria von Weber. The project is a natural extension of Viktor & Rolf's penchant for the surreal, the outrageous and the dramatic, as well as their runway shows staged as spectacles or performance art productions. The duo used almost one million Crystallized™ Swarovski elements to create the garments. This marks their second costume collaboration with Wilson—in November 2004 they created looks for 2 Lips and Dancers and Space for the Netherlands Dance Theatre.

According to Vogue.co.uk, the wardrobes for the soloists of Der Freischütz will take the form of "3D constructions in bright saturated hues and words emblazoned across the front of panels and shoulders, while the choir will adopt traditional German inspired costume - think dirndls and lederhosen." The image above left is Viktor & Rolf's whimsical floral design—"she will be a huge singing bouquet of flowers"—for the character Agatha, played by Juliane Banse.

The opera premieres at the Festspeilhaus Baden-Baden in Germany on May 30, 2009. For more images of the stunning costume collaboration as well as a Q&A with the designers, see the post from The New York Times' Blog The Moment.

Musical on the Life of Yves Saint Laurent in the Works

According to Women's Wear Daily, French singer Alain Chamfort and songwriter Pierre-Dominique Burgaud are working on creating a musical based on the life of Yves Saint Laurent. The stage production will chronicle the late couturier's rise to fashion icon, beginning with his early days designing at Christian Dior. On the songs, Saint Laurent's partner Pierre Bergé commented, "They are very good. They are moving."

Yves Saint Laurent passed away from brain cancer at the age of 71 in June 2008.

Opera For A New Age

Since September 2007, Toronto's Canadian Opera Company has been offering a promotion for those between the ages of 16 and 29 through the Opera for a New Age program presented by TD Bank Financial Group. With valid photo identification, those under 30 years of age can purchase opera tickets for just $20.00! You can purchase online at the Canadian Opera Company's website using the promotional code "DEAL", over the phone at (416) 363-8231 (or 1-800-250-4653) or in person at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts at 145 Queen Street West.

Approximately 150 seats are reserved in sections 3D, 4C and 5B for each performance under this price. That sounds like a lot but they sell out fast! Unfortunately there is a limit of two tickets per person per opera, so that complicates group outings slightly, but it's still a great promotion geared to attract a younger generation that may not be as enthusiastic about the opera (not to mention the normally pricey tickets).

Opera for a New Age tickets went on sale this morning for the Spring 2009 season, which features three operas: Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra," Puccini's "La Boheme" and Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I'm hoping to see the latter two operas; Shakespeare is always a good bet and I'm looking forward to seeing the opera that inspired the modern-day adaptation, RENT.

Rufus Wainwright's Opera To Get North American Debut at 2010 Luminato

According to the Globe and Mail, Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright's new opera "Prima Donna" will have its North American premiere at Toronto's Luminato Festival in 2010 and its world premiere in Manchester in July. The opera—for which Wainwright wrote the score and a French-language libretto—is set in Paris in 1970 and tells the story of an aging opera singer who strives to regain her international status as a top soprano. The work was co-commissioned by Luminato, the Manchester International Festival and the Melbourne International Arts Festival. In a statement yesterday, Wainwright related his feelings that his composition of the opera was a "daring and risky" venture and thanked Toronto "for having the guts to make it happen."

This month, Wainwright is set to premiere in Berlin his musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's sonnets, which he composed along with the Berliner Ensemble.

The 2009 Luminato Festival runs from June 5 to 15 and takes place in various locations around the city.

Portable Dance Festival

Beginning March 23, 2009, a free, month-long dance festival called the Portable Art Festival will be available by podcast on your iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP player or computer. The dances in the festival were filmed at international locations (China, Mexico, the Netherlands) and around New York City by 48 professional dancers who volunteered for the project. The goal of the festival is to bring dance to a wider audience; according to Pascal Rekoert, the producer of the festival and artistic director of the Manhattan-based dance group Flexicurve, the medium generally has not attracted as big or varied an audience as other artforms.



For the full story, read the NY Daily News article.

To sign up for the Portable Dance Festival, check out www.flexicurve.com. Click on "Podcasts" and then "Subscribe."

My friend, the Brooklyn-based artist and videographer Meghann Snow, was involved in the final shoot for the project, which took place in the Desert Pavilion of the Steinhardt Conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

To view Meghann's independent artwork, check out the videos on her Vimeo page and her mixed-media work at www.gallerythe.org.