Lighting Design
Live from the Royal Opera 2008. David McVicar’s powerful 2008 production of Strauss's opera – based on a play by Oscar Wilde – takes the controversial and disturbing film 120 Days of Sodom as its visual reference. The action is set in a debauched palace, which has suggestions of Nazi Germany. Strauss’s ravishing and voluptuous score adds to the sexual alchemy that is conjured by an international cast led by Nadja Michael in the title role. Salome is filmed for the big screen with High Definition cameras and recorded in true surround sound.
Lighting Artist
The English National Opera first mounted David Alden's production of Ariodante, one of Handel's greatest masterpieces, in 1993. It met with unanimous critical and popular acclaim, and this 1996 revival features many of the leading singers from the original production. Ariodante is Handel's 1735 setting of an episode from Ariosto, in which the King of Scotland's daughter is treacherously accused of infidelity to her promised husband. The range of feelings provoked as the characters develop is caught in music of quite extraordinary emotional power, even by Handel's own exalted standards.
