HATİCE UTKAN
LONDON – Hürriyet Daily News
Italian composer Donizetti’s world famous opera ‘Lucrezia Borgia,’ first staged in 1833, is now at the London Coliseum with the interpretation of film director Mike Figgis. The English director’s ‘Lucrezia Borgia’ raises eyebrows with its unique presentation of the erotic and dark side of this well-known opera by combining theater, cinema and opera
Opera is one of the most popular cultural events for lovers of the stage in London, but this time audiences are witnessing a new opera performance.
Mike Figgis, director of “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Time Code,” has produced an opera and brought out a new perception for Donizetti’s “Lucrezia Borgia” via short film sequences.
Figgis’s “Lucrezia Borgia” production is not your everyday opera performance seen at opera houses round the world.
The English National Opera started it as part of a program to revitalize the genre, and now the organization is letting Figgis interpret “Lucrezia Borgia” as he sees fit.
The story of “Lucrezia Borgia” reminds one of Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King” with its Oedipal psychodrama with pre-Freudian intimations. The heroine Borgia, known for her femme fatale character, meets a young man named Gennaro. Gennaro falls in love with Borgia because of her affectionate manners, but his friends do not approve of his love for her. Things get more complicated when Borgia’s husband, Alfonso, learns about Gennaro and Borgia’s affair and tries to poison him.
Even though Borgia tried to prevent Alfonso from doing so, he doesn’t listen to her and at the end things get more chaotic when the truth emerges. Gennaro turns out to be Borgia’s illegitimate son and again the audience witnesses a mother-son love affair. Like all the old plays, “Lucrezia Borgia” also has prophecies and foreshadowing in it.
But the difference with this version of “Lucrezia Borgia” is not its 1800s-style plot, its prophecies or its old-fashioned theater scenes. It is Figgis’s contribution to the vision of “Lucrezia Borgia.” Figgis’s short film sequences, played before the prologue and the play’s two acts, function as an interdisciplinary aspect between theater, cinema and opera.
Figgis’s “Lucrezia Borgia” production is dark, erotic, melancholic and full of unethical stories.
Dark, erotic relations
Figgis once again proves that he is an expert storyteller about dark and disturbing relationships.
Figgis, a director who is known for such films as “Leaving Las Vegas” and “The Loss of Sexual Innocence,” reveals Borgia’s dark nature and presented the history of this femme fatale with great success in the short films, which comes before the prologue and two acts.
Even though the Borgia acting in the opera and the Borgia acting in the short films are occasionally not in harmony with each other, Figgis successfully depicts the melancholy, vile nature of the characters, as well as the history of the story with the sequence of short films.
Figgis tries to make the performance as dramatically interesting as possible for the audience, but sometimes the erotic and melancholic nature of Borgia in the films does not match the Borgia on the stage. It seems like there are two Borgias, the one on stage is evil but tries to be good, performed perfectly by Claire Rutter, while the other is melancholic, evil, erotic and seems to like her incestuous relationship with her son.
The differences between the two characters sometimes create a gap between Figgis’s vision of Borgia and Donizetti’s Borgia.
When Figgis’s combination of theater, short film and opera mix with the strong acting of Alfonso and Gennaro, the performance gives an intense result for the audience.
Figgis’s cinema
The new “Lucrezia Borgia,” on the other hand, proves to be significant for the audience. Figgis’s cinematic perception adds a peculiar aspect to the whole opera stage.
The erotic approach to “Lucrezia Borgia” opens a new page for opera scenes.
The last short films, which depict beautiful recreations of two famous Renaissance paintings from Veronese and Bronzino from the same period that the Borgia family lived, prove that Figgis not only studied the Borgia family, but also the history of this period.
Even though there are gaps between the short films and the opera performance, the last short film is a smooth collaboration between art and cinema and ties together the links between the production with the plot.
Figgis’s usage of renaissance paintings is so powerful that it also helps the audience understand the details in the plot. The evil truth behind the illegitimate son Gennaro, the reason why Borgia tries cover up for Gennaro and the whole plot come together in the last scene and short films.
The Veronese and Bronzino paintings also evoke the last scene, which makes the transition back to opera smoother with Leonardo’s Last Supper.
The addition of the short films give this production another dimension: Four short films placed at intervals throughout the opera telling the story of Borgia’s early life through dark and baroque-style music.
As a result of the mix of film and opera, Figgis’s version of “Lucrezia Borgia” is beautiful and deep.