Les Enfants Terribles
Credits | Reviews ⇓
Projects
Music by Philip Glass, 1996
Choreographed and Directed by Javier de Frutos
Stage and Costume Design by Jean-Marc Puissant
Projections Design by Tal Rosner
Lighting Design by Bruno Poet
Production Manager: Simon Khamara
Costume Supervisor: Sabine Lemaitre
Hair and Make Up Supervisor: Melanie Bouvet
Costume Makers: Royal Opera House workshops, Sasha Keir, Jane Gill, Susanne Parkinson
Dyeing and Printing: Parveen Banga and ROH Dye Shop
Head Painter: Emma Troubridge
Props Master: Anthony Bernett
Images © I. Kerslake and courtesy of Royal Opera House
The scenography sets the production amongst five revolving units echoing the circular, minimal score of Philip Glass. On one side, the room of a bourgeois Hausmannian Parisian apartment; on the other, the facade of a building flanked with flights of stairs and landings.
Jean Cocteau’s novel is set in the 1930s; Jean-Pierre Melville directed the seminal film version in 1950, costumed by Christian Dior; Philip Glass composed the opera in the late 1990s. The costume design quotes, revisits and blends French fashion of these three eras, mixing bought clothes, historical fashion recreations and made theatrical costumes.
The Telegraph by Mark Monahan
Jean-Marc Puissant’s constantly shifting, stage-foreshortening set helps tell the story very clearly indeed.
The Arts Desk by Jenny Gilbert
Jean-Marc Puissant’s set design compounds these complications with multiple flights of steps, leading nowhere, and multiple revolves. In the course of many scene changes the sheer discipline evident in repositioning characters, props and staircases or clearing them all away in a trice is a spectacle in itself.
Dancetabs by Jann Parry
Jean-Marc Puissant’s set is constantly on the move, its changes of location illustrated by video projections. Puissant’s versatile costumes suit singers and dancers alike, identifying characters and their avatars. He has designed a spectacular ball-gown for Yanowsky, when she, as Lise, eventually gets a job as a model in a fashion house.