L’Enfant et les Sortilèges/L’Heure Espagnole
Animating RavelGrégoire Pont’s remarkable work avoids easy technical effects and always sticks to the truth of text and music. Never has the meaning of 'spells' been so well embodied. The result is a masterwork where the stage setting shows unexpected details, designed with a great sense of poetry on the screen.
James Bonas brings Ravel’s two contrasting operas to sparkling life through the magical animations of Grégoire Pont – one a fantasy tale of childhood rebellion; the other a racy Spanish comedy.
- Advanced projection and animation techniques help capture the fantasy and poetry of Ravel’s subtle aesthetics
- Conceived to work equally well on opera stage and in concert hall
- Flexibility of performing either one or both pieces
- Both works originally commissioned by Opéra de Lyon
L’Heure Espagnole, Opéra de Lyon, 2019
My wish is to use animation as a living matter. Not to project video sequences on a screen as so often happens in concert, but that the animation turns up where one least expects it: taking over a body, escaping from a mouth or dancing like an animated motif on a dress.
This semi-staged version of L’enfant et les sortilèges is a marvellous opportunity for me to play with my graphic universe.
One has the very strong feeling that Ravel uses this opera to demonstrate the amplitude of his musical palette. This is how I conceive the animations – with the development of a variety of stage pictures to create a multitude of visual effects.
