07.07.2017
A palace for Cinderella
How can a production first premiered in 1945 be presented in a way that is modern but that also retains its historical charm? This is the challenge faced by the team of artists behind our production of the ballet Cinderella. Stage designer Vyacheslav Okunev describes how sets originally designed by Pyotr Williams for Rostislav Zakharov’s ballet will look in the age of digital technology.
"We are making full use of the artist’s work, which is kept in the Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum in Moscow. His most valuable works are genuine masterpieces — the palace panorama and the ball scene in particular. French Rococo was undoubtedly a source of inspiration for Williams, but he largely based his work on versions of the style in St Petersburg, such as the Peterhof Palace ballroom. It will be interesting for the audience to try to guess which parts of the set have been inspired by other palaces near the city. I’ll let you in on one example: instead of using traditional chandeliers in the ball scene, we use lamps based on the ones you can see at Pavlovsk.
„The most interesting challenge for us was redesigning the giant panorama of the palace for the scene where Cinderella flees the ball just before midnight. This is the climactic scene of the ballet, when Cinderella loses her glass slipper. Video artist Gleb Filshtinsky and I decided to use 3D technology for the whole scene. We brought Williams’ sketches to life: you can walk around the rotunda and run through the enfilades. A huge amount of work goes into selecting and rendering the material. I think this will make for a fascinating part of the production.
„When I worked on the production of The Flames of Paris, I had to reconstruct Vladimir Dmitriev’s sets. We know that he had never been to Paris, and yet his sets portrayed an entirely faithful version of the city that had been gleaned from pictures from that time. I suspect that Williams had never been to France either. You can sense that he was working from etchings and books from the 18th century which he had access to. He clearly drew from all sources that reflected the material culture of a bygone era. You can also sense the influence of French artists Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard: you can find references to their paintings in his sets. Having also once been a young artist who had never been to Paris, I can relate to this well. When I found myself having to depict other countries and other eras, I would gather material from the works of these artists that came before me. We would find iconographic material, such as lithographs in the Academy of Fine Arts, but we weren’t allowed to take photographs. We would have to redraw motifs, having got permission beforehand.
Everything’s a lot simpler now that everything’s so freely accessible online. But I just want to highlight once more that Williams found most of his inspiration in the architecture of this city’s environs. He took his fairy-tale interiors from St. Petersburg’s palaces. Of course, he didn’t just copy everything: he added his own creative touch. But he largely based his work on what was typical of 18th-century European palaces. And it is a great pleasure for us to show modern audiences that the artistic foundation for the sets of this Moscow production lies in our very own city and palaces.“
"We are making full use of the artist’s work, which is kept in the Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum in Moscow. His most valuable works are genuine masterpieces — the palace panorama and the ball scene in particular. French Rococo was undoubtedly a source of inspiration for Williams, but he largely based his work on versions of the style in St Petersburg, such as the Peterhof Palace ballroom. It will be interesting for the audience to try to guess which parts of the set have been inspired by other palaces near the city. I’ll let you in on one example: instead of using traditional chandeliers in the ball scene, we use lamps based on the ones you can see at Pavlovsk.
„The most interesting challenge for us was redesigning the giant panorama of the palace for the scene where Cinderella flees the ball just before midnight. This is the climactic scene of the ballet, when Cinderella loses her glass slipper. Video artist Gleb Filshtinsky and I decided to use 3D technology for the whole scene. We brought Williams’ sketches to life: you can walk around the rotunda and run through the enfilades. A huge amount of work goes into selecting and rendering the material. I think this will make for a fascinating part of the production.
„When I worked on the production of The Flames of Paris, I had to reconstruct Vladimir Dmitriev’s sets. We know that he had never been to Paris, and yet his sets portrayed an entirely faithful version of the city that had been gleaned from pictures from that time. I suspect that Williams had never been to France either. You can sense that he was working from etchings and books from the 18th century which he had access to. He clearly drew from all sources that reflected the material culture of a bygone era. You can also sense the influence of French artists Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard: you can find references to their paintings in his sets. Having also once been a young artist who had never been to Paris, I can relate to this well. When I found myself having to depict other countries and other eras, I would gather material from the works of these artists that came before me. We would find iconographic material, such as lithographs in the Academy of Fine Arts, but we weren’t allowed to take photographs. We would have to redraw motifs, having got permission beforehand.
Everything’s a lot simpler now that everything’s so freely accessible online. But I just want to highlight once more that Williams found most of his inspiration in the architecture of this city’s environs. He took his fairy-tale interiors from St. Petersburg’s palaces. Of course, he didn’t just copy everything: he added his own creative touch. But he largely based his work on what was typical of 18th-century European palaces. And it is a great pleasure for us to show modern audiences that the artistic foundation for the sets of this Moscow production lies in our very own city and palaces.“
