She was born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson (fish). At one point, dancers storm in wearing three large "tornadoes" above their heads.Īpollo's fish-laden disguise as a mortal is a tongue-in-cheek nod to Madame de Pompadour, the onetime official chief mistress of King Louis XV and influential patron of the arts.
Multicolored Graces - goddesses of beauty, grace and charm - dance at her feet. She stands 12 to 14 feet tall, and her skirt has a 20-foot radius when spread out flat on the floor. Rococo was a natural fit for Dazzle, who describes himself as an "instinct-based, emotionally-driven, conceptual artist trapped in the role of costume designer most of the time." The designer's star is on the rise after his first retrospective show, which closed in February at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.Ī cascading rainbow of tulle fabric with satin backing wraps Folie, whose head is framed in yellow and green like a peacock train. And everything is like a dessert that has 20 layers." "Everything is abundance and alive and beautiful and lush. "Everything was just like, look at all of those layers of the dress, look at all of that hair, look at all of the flowers in the hair," he tells NPR's Leila Fadel. There are hints of drag and burlesque, with sequins, glitter and found objects. His oversized outfits burst with color and texture. "It truly is a maximalist aesthetic," says costume designer Matthew Flower, who goes by Machine Dazzle. There's a storm, a character representing madness ("la Folie") and the two gods just might have something going for each other.Ībigail Marie Curran checks herself in the mirror before going onstage to play punk rocker Storm Cloud in Opera Lafayette's production of Io. Mercury plays his traditional role of messenger. The plot pits two gods fighting for the love of a mortal nymph, the titular Io.
it's a gift, really."Īs it turns out, Io is a hilarious one-act opera-ballet. "I hope the American public feels that because. "To try to complete the work and give it a possible life at last after almost three hundred years, it was quite a challenge, believe me," Bouissou tells Morning Edition host Leila Fadel. The longtime Rameau expert recently completed the 18th century French composer's unfinished manuscript of Io, which received its world premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., this week, with an additional performance at New York's El Museo del Barrio next week. "We don't know anything about this opera, not the name of the librettist, nor the theater for which it was intended, nor the date of composition and why Rameau has not completed this opera," says French musicologist Sylvie Bouissou. But the birth of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Io has been a long time coming - in fact, it took about 280 years. Belgian soprano Gwendoline Blondeel performs as la Folie (madness) in the Opera Lafayette production of Jean-Philippe Rameau's recently completed 18th century opera Io.
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