ANDREA CHENIER
Composer: Umberto Giordano
Company: Opera North
Director: Annabel Arden
Set and costume design and video content: Joanna Parker
Video and projection design: Dick Straker
Lighting design: Peter Mumford
Sound design: Peter Malkin
Design associate: Ana Sofia Londono
Photography: Robert Workman, Dick Straker & Peter Mumford
Poetry translated by Stephen Romer
Production directed by Annabel Arden.
ANDREA CHENIER VIDEO LANGUAGE
The actual poetry of Andrea Chenier had never been translated into English. This became the stimulus for aspects of the video and sound world that existed with the music by Giordano. Reading and projection of the poetry prefigures the playing of the orchestral score in the live performance; introducing the audience to the real existence of the writer who was executed during the French Revolution. The video animation evolved collaboratively from paintings of the poetry and from filming paint thrown, dripped and written onto perspex surfaces.