About
A DAMNED GOOD PAIRING. Director Andreas Mitisek provides some visual continuity between La Voix Humaine and Gianni Schicchi by using much of the same stage design and props in both. In the latter, however, he heightens the comedy with outlandish costumes, showcasing the most garish of 1960s couture, including brightly colored psychedelic prints, ruffled dress shirts, and oversize, gold-framed eyeglasses.
It is a surprisingly successful and enjoyable pairing that illuminates the similarities and differences of each. For one, both share a preoccupation with love and death (don’t all operas?), but one is a tragedy and the other a comedy. –– Stage and Cinema, Chicago
Mitisek did, however, update "Schicchi" to the swinging 1960s, with all the funky fashions thereof, thereby bringing its rambunctious action closer in time to Poulenc's 1959 musical portrait of a woman engaged in a final phone conversation with her former lover. –– Chicago Tribune
Credits
Elle: Patricia Racette
Video Design: Sean Ceawalti
Lighting Design: David Bradke
Conductor: Ari Pelto
Photos
Chicago Opera Theater 2016
Photographer: Michael Brosilow