Les Enfants Terribles

Royal Opera and Royal Ballet, 2017

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.