For me the visual is not an afterthought, not an illustration of the text.
Usually in theater the visual repeats the verbal. If you place the candelabra on a rock in the ocean, you begin to see what it is. “If you place a baroque candelabra on a baroque table, both get lost. “When you put them together, they create another texture, another meaning.” This radical disjunction of word and image is Wilson’s why-paint-a-white-horse-white theory.
“What you hear, what you see must be different,” he says. Eighty ostriches tripping a wild fandango on the moon Frederick the Great dancing a delicate minuet with two lumbering bears King Lear stumbling over Lincoln on a deserted battlefield while overhead a giant snow owl screeches a Hopi Indian prayer for peace-Wilson’s startling juxtapositions create an unforgettable, mysterious beauty. The Merlin of the avant-garde, Wilson, 51, has transformed performance by challenging its idolatry of the word and giving it dissonant images. WILSON CAN BE CONFOUNDING, TO say the least, but his work compensates for any vexations. Nine months later, “Doktor Faustus” opens to roaring cheers. “This milk bottle is interesting to look at.” “You don’t have to be in a bordello visually,” Wilson shoots back. That milk bottle doesn’t have anything to do with my opera.” “But the scene takes place in a bordello. “What does meaning mean?” returns the director. Giacomo Manzoni, the befuddled composer, asks what the milk bottle means. “I thought I would have a screen over the stage with a film of someone driving nails into a milk bottle, but the milk doesn’t run out.” He shows the group a drawing: a milk bottle with nails stuck all over it. “This is how I think,” he explains, holding aloft the pencil. Wilson continues to draw, lost in absolute concentration, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. Sitting quietly, people squirm, twist, itch. The minutes drag by, creating a tension that soon becomes excruciating.
The director’s brooding presence imposes an unearthly silence. The others slowly gather round and sit down. He stalks over to the table, sits down, takes a long pencil, starts drawing. Wilson-a towering 6'4" with luminous blue eyes and sandy hair-strides through the door an hour late. Words like “odd,” “weird,” “bizarre” buzz through the room. Those who have never worked with Wilson pump the others for clues about the enigmatic director who has dominated European theater for the past 15 years. Faustus.” Versace is designing the costumes. They have gathered this evening for the first production meeting of a new opera to be performed at La Scala based on novelist Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Expectantly, nervously, others fidget, waiting for director Robert Wilson, an American original from Waco, Texas, to arrive. Versace stares out the window into the exotic gardens of his palace. At its head, a sheaf of papers and a silver goblet with freshly sharpened pencils sit. It all looks like an extravagant fantasy dreamed up by La Scala opera director Franco Zeffirelli, but, in fact, this palazzo is the grandiose residence of fashion designer Gianni Versace.Ī long Renaissance table, elaborately carved with garlands and cornucopia, stands against one wall in Versace’s conference room. Inside one of these, after one has safely passed through the portcullis, past the growling German shepherds with chiseled teeth, past the armed guards, after ascending the grand staircase to the piano nobile, one is transported to a palazzo of Baroque splendor: marble on the floor, gold-framed mirrors on the wall, crystal chandeliers suspended in the air. Outside, the houses lining the street look like forbidding stone fortresses. Via del Bambino Gesu is the most exclusive address in Milan.
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