Don Giovanni with Berkeley Opera is a radical exercise in minimalism. The stage is a standard black surround; black floor, a series of black legs and borders all framing a white CYC. An upstage set of legs against the CYC is also white in order to make the space visually continue further offstage. Upstage just in front of the CYC are four steel framed boxes faced with milk plexi and topped with clear plexi. Downstage on the floor is a 4′x8′ mirror which serves as Don Giovanni’s personal island of narcissism. For the second act we have a single hanging streetlamp that flies in.
Minimal.
The director, and artistic director of the company Mark Streshinsky, was interested in creating a very spare environment wherein we could focus on the performers and the music without the distractions of all the scenery which can often get in the way of the basic storytelling. The lighting too wants to be in a similar spare vocabulary. A few simple and distinct elements will reconfigure and move through the piece.
One last design element worth noting is projection. In addition to the statue of Il Commendatore a few scenic moments will be treated with projections (on the CYC and white masking legs) to locate us in specific places throughout the piece.
One thing that will really help sell the minimalism of the piece is the performance style. Mark is doing a lot of work to keep the singers from “acting” and has placed the performance within a very naturalistic idiom. This sets the characterization against the setting, and the inherent absurdity of Opera, in a powerful way. By making the people real it allows the design to really push the edges of what is needed to tell the story.
Don Giovanni is a dark comedy. Often the nasty and despicable character of Don Giovanni, and his misanthropic sexual exploits, can overshadow the comedy. But the comedy must be treated with a very steady hand or the weight of Giovanni’s actions can be lost. It is a balance. And no simple task. Especially for a piece which begins with a near rape on stage.
As I thought through the piece, it was the darkness that first struck me. Most of the piece takes place at night. Further, we start with a rape and end with our villain being dragged into Hell. Not exactly the lightest of material. This led me to want to approach the piece with cool colors and a lot of shadow. Sidelight would be the name of the game. Sidelight and silhouette. Aside from being stylistically wrong for the piece, with the use of projection it made no sense to bother with front light. There are a few moments where we will want to see faces clearly, but those should be distorted, so the choice was made to place a series of floodlight footlights at the downstage edge of the stage. Some boxbooms will allow us to fill out the faces a little more for the wedding scene, but other than that we are lighting from the side and overhead.
Since our venue has a repertory plot, and my paperwork consisted of channeling their hookup, I will not be including a lightplot for this iteration of Inside the Design Idea. I will, however, give you a list of systems and colors. So here we go:
- High Sidelight in L161
- Head Hi Booms in L202
- Shin Booms in L201
- Backlight in CLR
- Backlight in L161
- Footlights in CLR
- Diagonal Footlights in L201
- Plexi Lightboxes in CLR
- Blue CYC in R68
- Clear CYC
- Red CYC in L106
We load in and focus this evening. The show opens next week. See here for more information.
Please let me know what you think about this look inside the design of Don Giovanni in comments.
Tags: design, idi, lighting design, opera, shows
Thank you for shearing this detailed LD information. I have also read your colour pages with great interest and picked up tips and ideas not even covered in the book “Light and colour filters”! The sad thing is that the LD is not listed together with the rest of the production team at the Don Giovanni web page. I have copied this from the standard rider for The association of Lighting Designers based in UK: Lighting Designer to receive billing equal in size and style to the Set and / or Costume Designer on all programmes, posters, advertisements, press releases, publications, websites and all merchandise whenever the Set and / or Costume Designer is listed. Credit to immediately follow Set and Costume design credit.
Failure to do this is a breach of the Lighting Designer’s Moral rights (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988). We cannot only make the light, we also have to be visible! Best regards Axel Sundbotten, LD based in Norway.
Glad you like the posts. I enjoy hearing people finding the information useful.
I appreciate you sending me the contractual info. In the case you sighted it was more to do with oversight than anything else. But then that is also what contracts are to protect us from.