With La Fanciulla del West, Vincent Boussard and his team (Vincent Lemaire: settings, Christian Lacroix: costumes, Guido Levi: light design) created another successful staging at the Hamburg State Opera. Here are some press cuts.
„Stage-director Vincent Boussard focuses his reading of La Fanciulla del West on the pain of being deracinated. He and his team have chosen a timeless frame for the story which makes the misery of the miners much more comprehensible to the audience than in a kitschy spectacle performance with horses and gun smoke“ (Die Welt, 3.02.15). The Hamburgische Morgenblatt shares this point of view (3.02.15): „Vincent Boussard leaves Wild West clichés aside. The setting with the green walls and the girder bar reflects an oppressing, almost threatening atmosphere“. The Kieler Nachrichten adds (3.02.15): „Director Boussard’s team which already reduced Puccini’s Butterfly at the State Opera merciless and in a psychological manner also found a salutary and commonly valid interpretation for this rarely played Italo-Western. Silhouettes only still remind of cowboys’ romanticism. The gold diggers appear as loveless and up-rooted immigrant workers from today or yesterday. An all-male society full of violence, though having a golden heart to scrap together loose money for the home-journey of one being close to become mad”.
Concerti.de is also convinced of the production (4.02.15): „What a sensitiveness of the staging team which precisely draws a male-society being in the unlucky extreme situation of being deprived of women! Individual fates and touching little scenes are emerging out of the crowd like the one of a very young man who left home in order to find gold and, at the end of the day helplessly calls for his mother“.
The choir is not considered as a unity, but as an entity of individual characters as the Hamburger Abendblatt points out (2.02.15): “In general these numerous men, up-rooted, home-sick and easily seducible for thoughtless actions: Director Vincent Boussard guides them outstandingly which makes the body language determine the atmosphere“.The Deutsche Presseagentur reports enthusiastically: „... with a furious choir-acting and a realistic staging-dynamic the French Vincent Boussard provides a propulsive force for an all in all coherent Fanciulla-interpretation.”
The final comment stems from the Stader Tageblatt (3.02.15): "One can hardly figure out that we had to wait for 84 years to see a new staging of La Fanciulla del West at the Staatsoper Hamburg. This triumphal come-back overcomes old prejudices and gives way to new values“.
Vincent Boussard makes his Japan debut now staging La Traviata at the New National Theatre in Tokyo. Opening night on May 10, 2015. All dates of performances.
9.04.2015