Alison Chitty

Movies

The ROH Live: Nabucco
Set Designer
Nabucco, King of Babylon, takes Jerusalem in his war with the Israelites – but his daughter Fenena loves the Israelite Ismaele. She releases their prisoners, leading her vengeful half-sister Abigaille to plot to take power. Nabucco declares himself a god and is struck by a bolt of lightning. Abigaille tricks the now feeble king into signing a death warrant for the Israelites, including Fenena and Ismaele. Nabucco prays to the God of Israel for forgiveness; his sanity is restored and he saves the prisoners from death. He converts himself and his people, while Abigaille commits suicide.
Verdi Nabucco
Production Design
NABUCCO may be Verdi's first masterpiece, and not just because of that amazing Chorus of Hebrews which is justly beloved by everyone who hears it. Dramatically, this opera is tightly constructed, with believable characters in an intense conflict over values and beliefs. And Verdi's music, however early in his career, however distant from triumphs like LA FORSA DEL DESTINO or AIDA, is highly animated, revealing inner turmoil and outer passions with beauty and economy. The ensembles are especially impressive, building to satisfying heights of emotional release for the singers and the audience. And Placido Domingo is a wonder to behold and hear. Even though his original voice was baritone, which he managed to transform into a tenor voice, he doesn't SOUND like a baritone to me. B-U-T his performance is so committed, so deeply interfused with Verdi's music, so generously integrated to the younger singers around him, that the waters part.
Theodora
Costume Design
The oratorio concerns the Christian martyr Theodora and her Christian-converted Roman lover, Didymus.
Theodora
Production Design
The oratorio concerns the Christian martyr Theodora and her Christian-converted Roman lover, Didymus.
Wagner : Parsifal
Art Designer
A young man ignorant of everything, including his own name, arrives at the Kingdom of the Holy Grail. Is he the ‘pure fool, enlightened by compassion’, who, it has been prophesied, will purify the kingdom?
The Turn Of The Screw
Production Designer
The operatic version of the famous story about a governess who fears her two charges are possessed.
Secrets & Lies
Production Design
After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to a working class white woman, Cynthia.
Naked
Production Design
An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey.
A Sense of History
Production Design
Jim Broadbent wrote and starred in this short film directed by none other than Mike Leigh. As a member of the landed gentry, the 23rd Earl of Leete has a duty to maintain and expand his lands. Shot in the style and manner of a BBC documentary, Broadbent tells his family history to the crew, who slowly come to realise - as do we - that things are not what they seem.
Life Is Sweet
Production Design
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, Andy is a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, Natalie is a plumber and Nicola is jobless. This film is about how they interact and play out family, conflict and love.