I saw your Orfeo ed Euridice in October. You did it on a small budget, yet it was one of most memorable designs. It was so beautiful that I absolutely had to ask you for an interview.
(laughing) Oh, good, I’m so pleased! That’s what every piece of theatre should do - take people to another place. It was one of those designs that just came to me in a very short time.
Would you talk us through the design process?
I go to art exhibitions, I see a lot of art and I use all sorts of things for inspiration, so I don’t have to repeat myself. I think if you take your inspiration just from theatre, then you tend to repeat someone else’s design.
I also use music a lot even if I’m doing a theatre piece that doesn’t have music in it, just for inspiration. It doesn't have to be from the same period as the play. It helps to evoke something in me and tells me something about that story. So I always work with music, regardless whether it’s an opera or not.
With Orfeo, I wanted to have an installation quality, to create an environment rather than a set. It’s such a complex piece. It goes from heaven to hell - and how do you show that on a small stage and a small budget? You have to do something that lifts it.
Even if there’s very little money, it should look good. It’s just a matter of approach. But I also think it’s the way I am used to work. I worked with Neil Bartlett at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. When I showed him my portfolio, and I explained that I’d only had £50 for a certain production. He told me never to apologise for the budget. You can make things look good without having a lot of money. It’s very hard work but you can do it. Although there’s a lot of bad theatre there with no money… (laughing)
…and there is a lot of theatre out there with millions of subsidies and too little to show for it!
Yes, you can go and see really expensive shows that look terrible. (laughing)
When I go out, I really don’t want to see grim council estates like that Barber of Seville a few years ago at the Savoy… People don’t need to pay for an opera ticket to see that!
But then, if you do council estate setting, you can also make it look good. Challenge me! I can make a glamorous council estate. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but I can do it…
No doubt. But let’s go to the very beginning.
I was exposed to opera from a very young age. My Dad is a huge opera fan and has conducted every opera in his living room to the radio. I grew up in Copenhagen. My parents took me to see everything in opera and theatre from the youngest age. They didn’t just take me to see The Magic Flute, they took me to see Boris Godunov and Gianni Schicchi. And that’s what triggered my ambition to become a designer, to get into opera.
I came to London to study at the Central School of Music and Drama and The Slade School of Fine Art. I got five years of training. My first job was working for Robert Wilson in New York. Then I decided to stay in London. As much as I hate London, I love London. I love the diversity, the people, the fact that everyone who comes here, wants to bring along something positive. There is a lot going on in the Arts.
I think I have been quite quite fearless, I have been writing letters to everybody, both in theatre and opera. I just need to tell those people about myself. They are never going to find you if you don’t let them know you exist. Maybe they get a little bit annoyed when they get their 54th letter... (laughing)
What was your first job?
After assisting Robert Wilson, I did a production at the Arcola Theatre, in Hackney, a play called Dolores, in the basement, on a £50 budget and no fee… But it looked great, the photos still impress people in my job interviews. Sometimes £50 takes you further than you think (laughing) . You just have to be inventive. You go to skips, beg and borrow.
Then I went to work for Neil Bartlett at the Lyric, whom I assisted on three productions. Apart from that, I have done my own stuff. I‘ve done quite a lot of theatre. I teach a little bit as well, new design, at Central School of Speech and Drama, and RADA among others. I’ve been mentoring students more than teaching. I love that. You get to forge a personal relationship with the student. We keep in touch, some of them assist me from time to time.
I have also done two operas for Hampstead Garden Opera, an amateur company in London, Eugene Onegin and Idomeneo, both directed by Sebastian Harcombe. It was good for the learning process.
What are your future productions?
I’ve just finished a project for Mahogany Opera in London, a two-week workshop called Towards a New Movement. It consisted of Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures, Berio’s Laborintus II and Blacher’s Abstrakte Oper Nr 1. They are all experimental pieces. The funding is being reviewed.
I have also worked with a Japanese composer Yuko Katori for the Royal Opera House Genesis Project on a piece called The Lily of the Valley, based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant. It was directed by Claudio Tedesco.
I am waiting to hear about funding for a project I have been talking about with a young Polish composer young Kasia Glowicka, which might lead to a collaboration.
I also try to contact people who I think it would be interesting to work with. I get a lot of work this way.
What was the first opera that really made an impact on you?
My Dad took me to Madama Butterfly in Berlin. He had warned me that she was going to commit suicide near the end. Of course, I still cried when she did. I must have been seven or eight. I was thrilled how opera took me to another place, transported me, engaged me, made me believe in things. Cio-cio-san took a bow at the end and we saw hat she was not dead, but the moment of death was completely believable and that’s what opera should do. It transports and transforms.
Butterfly I remember very clearly. Then there was The Maskarade by Carl Nielsen, a lighter piece, a comedy, by a composer not really known in this country…
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What is it that draws you into opera?
I don’t know… Music works in the unconscious. I don’t think you can say what that piece of music does to you. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t really have to analyse it. It makes you cry. It makes you happy. It takes you somewhere else. That’s what I love about opera.
Have you got your favourite composers?
I love 20th century, I love Alban Berg. Wozzeck is at the top of my list of beautiful pieces. I love Stravinsky. I also like the younger generation, John Adams and. Philip Glass. I love those that I call The Red Curtain Composers: Verdi, Puccini, the operas that you know by heart before you go to the opera house.
What do you like about modern composers?
I love the fact that every time you hear them, you get something new. All music should do that, of course. People often say that modern music is just repetitive with no tune in it, but it’s not what I think. To dismiss something because it doesn’t have an instantly recognisable tune?
But then I also love Hansel and Gretel, because it would be a great thing to design. It is a fairy tale. It’s not necessarily something I could listen to for hours. I just think it would be brilliant to do something really wacky with that.
I’ve got plenty of favourite composers. I loved working on Gluck’s Orfeo. It doesn’t really matter what period they represent if the music does something to you.
I am not going to ask you which composers you hate as it's bad for business…
(laughing) Oh, you mean composers that I despise and I and I actually start to feel sick when I listen to them? No, of course there are no such composers!
Maybe I am slightly less fond of Mozart. There are sections in all of his operas that are very beautiful. But if you take The Marriage of Figaro, for example, it goes on for four hours, while you could have cut it down to much less
(laughing). No, seriously, I would love to do Mozart. It’s a challenge.
You mentioned Hansel and Gretel.
Yes, I love the darkness of it. I love the fact that you’ve got a piece that sounds quite cheerful, but underneath there is darkness and cruelty. I love the duality. Then there’s Wozzeck. I probably like the slightly darker pieces, where there are multiple layers that you can peel… Wozzeck and Lulu. It doesn’t have to be dark as in pitch-black, just darker. I love Twin Peaks for example, the whole idea of an idyllic town with disturbing under-layers. When I work, I often play Berio, or Ligeti, or Blacher. It’s very abstract.
Is opera a dying art form?
I hope it isn’t! I think it needs to take more risk. Opera houses need to give more opportunities to young people, to employ young designers and young directors, not just revive another classic. Very rarely do they take risks with people who don’t have a name.
I think opera needs to come out. Beyond the opera houses. There should be more places where new work could be developed.
Of course, the huge productions should go on, there is no doubt about that. But I also think it’s important to make way for new talent. Isn’t that what OperaTalent is about?
But we do like the old talent too! (laughing) Back to the previous question about the future of opera - what do you think it is that people want?
I think people always want to be transported somewhere else, to be able to escape. I also think people want good stories. Stories don’t have to be complicated in order to engage you. Opera offers good, simple stories. People need to see something that isn’t in daylight - they need the surreal and the strange. We were talking about the council estate you resented seeing on stage – I could do a beautiful council estate that would make you feel really invigorated.
It’s not necessarily about doing fairy tales, I don’t mean The Lord of the Ring-esque approach. It’s about finding something new in the things perceived as ordinary. You have to make it new and vibrant.
What do you think about Calixto Bieito who put his Ballo in maschera conspirators on toilet seats?
I didn’t see that one. I saw his Don Giovanni. The red line excluding Don from the society was a beautiful idea. The simulated sex scenes were so seventies, though! I think that whatever you do should come from the right place. I’m fine with simulated sex and loo seats if it comes from the piece. But if you just set up to shock the rich and the corporate in the front rows, I think you’re completely wrong. Don’t you think? I try to find something that inspires me. I like Japanese design, I like Noh theatre. Simple, beautiful things. I use the toilet every day, thank you, and I don’t need to see it on stage. (laughing)
Whatever I do, I try to bring beauty to it. It doesn’t necessarily need to be what we perceive as conventional beauty, but it has to be something that people will want to carry away with them, to hold it for more than a week.
What do you do in your spare time, outside work?
I think it’s very important to have other things in your life. I don’t think opera should become your entire life. If work is all you have, it becomes really tedious.
I go to exhibitions, but that’s not necessarily for work. I just love it. It just happens. I think all inspiration should just happen. You can’t say that now you are going to get inspired. Everything we experience in life is inspiration in some way.
I go to the opera. I read. I do lots of gardening. I’m doing a degree in horticulture at the moment, it’s very inspiring. I cook a lot, Moroccan and Portugese. I find it very therapeutic, it gives me energy. I have a cat called Mr Pushkin. I love travelling and I don’t have to go very far to get inspired. I cycle, I swim, about a year ago I started white water rafting. I try to swim every morning in the Lido in Hackney, which is brilliant. I think it’s necessary when you’re so much in your head to do something that takes you completely away from all that. I’ve just taught myself to knit, mostly because I could never buy what I wanted. I quite like setting up new challenges for myself.
VIEW Nicolai Hart-Hansen’s page here.
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