Designer Hamish Peters posted a comment to the blog but it deserves higher billing.
I'm sure there is some sort of Designers' prerogative to change their minds.
Seriously though, the process of designing Judith Triumphans has been one of continual discovery, frustration and delight.
Mark and I have had so many talks about how the piece will work, how it will resonate with our audience, what we want to illuminate with this production, and how do we stage something wasn't really meant to be staged.
The set design was really the first thing we discussed. Creating the world in which the opera happens is the paramount concern for us. Mark and I looked at many images that we thought would encapsulate the place where this opera will take place. We also keep in mind the dramatic and narrative needs of the piece, can anyone say beheading!!!!!!
One thing we really debated was the way Vivaldi just suddenly changes location. This is something that is fine in a concert hall or behind the screen in the Ospedale Pieta, but for a fully staged, opera in the wonderful Angel Place (a fly tower, my kingdom for a fly tower... and wings....)
We went though many different permutations of space configurations, and looks. Things were kept and things were rejected, but we finally developed a stage design that will be totally different to anything Pinchgut has done in Angel Place, and one that will give us some fantastic theatrical spaces to perform the opera in.
The costumes were something that slowly developed as we were designing the set, again things were thought up, debated, rejected, bought back, and thrown out....
Again our struggle was to develop personalities and create identifiable types of people (what is a Bethulian???)
We were also conscious of creating a totally new look for Pinchgut audiences. Mark and I have thought about the world of the set and what sort of people inhabit this world, we have also looked at different time periods, both period and contemporary to try and indicate the types of people we think Judith, Holophernes, the Assyrians and the Bethulians are.
At the design presentation we really presented a work in progress in terms of the costumes. There are some things that have remained, but in talking more about the staging of the opera we have had to alter the design of the costumes. This has actually been a very liberating thing for me as the designer. I think it has helped push the visual part of the opera to a much more exciting level, and i hope it will be something that really helps to bring this beautiful opera alive.
And yes I'll be making a lot of the costumes, but I do have some very wonderful people to help, so if you have a Singer and want to lend a hand, let us know you would be more than welcome.