The sartorial stage
By Nina Tucker
The love affair between fashion, opera and performative art – and why a new staging of Bizet’s early masterpiece, The Pearl Fishers, read the trend right as it arrived on our shores.
Jackie Kennedy said “pearls are always appropriate”. Now, more so than ever. It’s the year of the opera aesthetic – jewel tones, silk materials, pearl accessories, and opera gloves emerge from runway to ready-to-wear – and an operatic October invites Christchurch into the zeitgeist. New Zealand Opera’s The Pearl Fishers coming to the Isaac Theatre Royal tells a story of forbidden love, loyalty and betrayal set in a traditionally seaside village turned luxury resort where image, influence and ambition shape every decision.
Fashion, art and drama have always found a natural affinity. The worlds are intrinsically linked; recognised by legendary couturiers like the Fendi sisters and Karl Lagerfeld, who extended their design work to the opera stage and those in attendance.
Fashion intersected with opera as early as the 17th century when the upper class used opera houses to parade their most exuberant and exquisite clothes; today, both remain the highest of high culture. Fashion has forever borrowed from opera, and opera has always been influenced by fashion. Together, they create the ultimate in theatrical storytelling.
I asked Yannis Thavoris, set and costume designer of The Pearl Fishers, how this production hits the right fashion note in a modern New Zealand.
What approach did you take to the costume design for this new production of The Pearl Fishers?
Director Stephen Barlow and I have a thoroughly collaborative way of working. The Pearl Fishers is an opera with ravishing music but with a lot of cultural baggage and antiquated colonial and gender attitudes in its plot, and our approach needed to address these for the present. So, we’ve built a concept around the libretto in order to tell the main story of the opera, which is essentially a love triangle, for a contemporary audience. The costumes, as well as the set, are there to serve this concept in the most visually efficient manner.
Without giving too much away, describe the style on stage… what can audiences expect?
We streamlined the design to a set consisting of elemental shapes and clean lines, in contrast with the expected orientalism that usually illustrates this opera. The costumes are contemporary, but with hints of the 1940s, in order to indicate that the story takes place in a world that may not be exactly our own. We hope that this visual approach will bring forward more vividly the not-so-hidden cruelty as well as the luscious romance of the opera.
Hero image: NZ Opera’s new production of The Pearl Fishers plays at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Auckland 23-27 September and Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch 14-18 October. Tickets and info nzopera.com
