Intermezzo

Terry on telly

Terry Gilliam's Damnation of Faust for ENO airs on BBC4 this Friday, 14 October, at 7.30pm.

Hopefully with more straight talk from its director on the side.

More Berlioz for Terry Gilliam?

After his success with The Damnation of Faust, ENO have asked Terry Gilliam to direct Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini in 2013, he tells the Independent. But he says, "I can't definitely say yes until I know whether I'm shooting a film next year." 

Good job ENO want him as a director and not a salesman though. "When it works, opera is extraordinary. It's like bullfighting. But most of them are just crap. Extraordinary sets, amazing singing, but crap. Jonathan Miller's The Elixir of Love just depressed me because it was so good. Then I saw other things and thought, this is horrible. People are spending 90-odd quid to sit in those seats and they're getting a rotten deal. My approach was always, we are doing a show here".

Terry Gilliam's ENO Faust comes to TV

 
Terry Gilliam's Nazi-tasting ENO production of The Damnation of Faust is to air on BBC4 this autumn.

The director himself will introduce the work for TV.

In recent years, opera on BBC TV has been the near-exclusive preserve of the Royal Opera House. While ENO have teamed up with Sky Arts for a series of gimmicks like '"3-D Lucrezia" and "Multiview Bohème", I can't remember when one of their productions last aired on a terrestrial channel. Could this signal a longer-term switch in BBC affiliations?

Gilliam uber alles

The Damnation of Faust - ENO, 6 May 2011

 

What lures men to evil?

Linking the rise of the Nazis to the Faust tale isn't new - Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus got there a long time ago. But Terry Gilliam's exploration of the seductive power of the dark side is so assured and so brilliantly integrated with Berlioz's music that it's hard to believe this is the first time he's directed an opera - not to mention that he claims to be no great opera fan anyway.

plus de Faust

Terry Gilliam may well be the first movie director to approach the Faust story in operatic form, but there are a surprisingly large number who've tackled it on film. Did that play into Gilliam's selection of La damnation de Faust over all the other operas he could have chosen to direct, I wonder?

The best movie version has to be F.W. Murnau's 1926 Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage, now available in full ~for free~ due to the miracle of copyright expiry. Beat this, ENO:

Terry Gilliam's Nazi Faust

Terry Gilliam makes his opera directing debut on 6 May, when The Damnation of Faust opens at ENO.

In the just-released trailer above, he grants a sneak peek at a swastika-plastered sketch pad, the first public whiff of his production concept. Bet he never guessed just how topical that would turn out to be.

He talks more - and most intelligently - about opera in an interview on ENO's website.