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You all know how I have a passion for opera? Occasionally, I design sets for them as an intellectual exercise. Here's some of my more presentable ones. (No one wants to see "Samson Et Delilah" with the stage rendered as a giant set of tits with a rosary hanging between them and an empty hamster cage at the front, so why did I think THAT one up?)

*Tannhauser Act 1 – two semicircular cushiony blobs flank the side of the stage to enclose the Venusberg in greenery. Flowers and shit poke through the tops, and the resting dancers sit atop them. Atop the gigantic, yonic grotto door carved into the stone, in front of a giant ovoid with forestry designs painted atop it, is a giant tree. On the top is Venus’ barberchair throne, with an extraordinarily long and based footrest. When it comes time for her to sing, she slides down into a standing/lounging position, and returns clambering up the sides. Tannhauser sits to her left in a lower, more comfortable, “Guest” chair on the side of the tree. The stage lights project a yellow oblong against crossing red stripes.
When Tannhauser rebels, he hops onto a neighboring greenery mound, and out the grotto door. Venus jumps out onto his chair, onto the mound, and out the door, trying to stop him (this is so she’s not in the chair when the scene changes). The scene changes in strobe light – the tree split in half and wheels around the back, framing the forest greenery, and the semicircular blobs move behind the tree (there are probably stagehands with wheels hidden in the thing). The shepherd stands behind a hill, the pilgrims move in paths along the stage three times until they get to stage front. THAT’s where Tannhauser joins them.

*Heretic – just an idea I thought up of adapting a libretto of the first seven chapters of Rukis’ ongoing story “Heretic,” up to the birth of Brook and Klaus. It has everything you want in an opera – rich person sets, verismo whatsits, a childbirth, and a scene of a guy getting (SPOILER) pistol-whipped to death.
Act 1 sets – The visiting room of a prison, which morphs into a tailor’s shop and carriage (my stage designs are pretty much unplayable straight) into the garden of a country mansion. Act 2 – The interior of the mansion, including a study, bedroom, pantry, and ballroom. Act 3 – a dueling ground with empty tree in background; then two bedrooms alongside, one of which has a labor going on.

*Carmen – Act 3 starts in a gypsy camp (and has little caravans on a hilltop), to change into the scene outside the bullring in scene 2, the caravans shift stage and a section of the hill unfurls into the outside of the bullring. You need too much space in the esplanades for a crowd, this being Carmen and all.

*Tristan Und Isolde – Act 1 takes place in the royal tent of a ship sailing from Ireland to Cornwall, and contains a medicine chest and whatnot in front of canopy, sail, and bow. (Karajan loved big-ass sails, and everyone, including me, follows his lead.)

*Die Flegende Hollander – Act 1 Daland’s ship moors in a rocky fjord for storm-shelter, then a big-ass ghost ship with blood red sails appears, helmed by a zombie Dutchman. Act 2 is Daland’s house, whose only staging requirements are a big-ass door on stage right for Erik to exit, a big-ass portrait of the aforementioned zombie atop the fireplace, and a fuckton of spinning wheels and an armchair. Seeing as how “tying the spinning wheels together” has already been done, I echo the shape of the wire clouds from act 1 into wire claws that hover above the spinners, threatening to pin Senta to them.
For Act 3, it’s the docks. The sailors celebrate and drink and eat, but the zombie crew just stays in their ship. Needs plenty of open space. The cliff that Senta climbs is the aforementioned dock, which, tacked onto a crane, rises ominously as she climbs it, dragging up with it cliff-face cloth. The Dutchman’s ship collapses into itself like a Hoberman sphere as it recedes into the distance the whole time, but as Senta climbs the cliff, Daland’s ship falls slightly to stage left to suggest distance. Senta “Jumps” by assuming the shape of a crucifixion, and stepping out of a wire frame with tatters of cloth sewn onto it and throwing the frame from the cliff face into the audience. A strobing black light kicks up. She then assumes fetal position on the clifftop, and in the distance the Dutchman and Senta’s ghosts are represented by these same wire molds with clothing, catching abhorrently bright salvation lights, being held aloft by wires. The stage goes red and then blindingly white, with patches of yellow, as Senta’s salvation comes in.

*Parsifal – The forests, the background of the temple and castle, and flower garden are backed by ridiculously flat-looking stage sets – to emphasize their utter fakeness. The forest is marked with several limpid tree shapes; the swan is realistic, hollow, precut and assembled with magnets, and has a bolt of red satin inside for blood. Upon falling to the stage, it will break apart, and Gurnemanz will gesture with the swan’s severed head. The transformation to the grail hall is captured by several mobile glass panes with Vasarely-esque designs. These panes have elaborate bases a la Brancusi’s sculpture bases. The backdrop will slowly lift up, to reveal the hall made of a series of De Stijl blocks painted to represent such columns. The knights will assemble the trees into a communion table, and the boys chorus comes out of the backs of the blocks as they sing. Parsifal and Kundry get little cushiony guest chairs to observe from.
Act 2 opens on an impotently sprawling castle set, made partially out of filled spice racks. The sky behind is a wasteland. When the flower garden appears, de stijl blocks painted to look like Bob Ross/Thrift Store flower paintings are wheeled in and the lighting turns all moiré and shit. A really weird backdrop appears. The perspective on all these paintings don’t quite match up. Various greek statuary and benches litter the place. The spear trick is accomplished by (depending on how good the lights are) a beam of blue light with a point of light made by red and green lights (this’ll be pretty hard) or go the literalist route and have a giant glass tube with holes at the end for the spear to be inserted or removed from (that’s if we’re trying to be dinky, to relieve the tension). The castle disintegrates by all the stijl blocks falling flat on their faces and the flat moving up AFAP, to reveal the dilapidated husk of the castle we opened on.
Act 3 opens on a bare stage flat, the whole area strewn with sticks and broken medicine bottles and balm jars. Gurnemanz pounds a lean beefsteak as he talks. At the very end, back in that grail hall, with Amfortas on the table, when Parsifal uncovers the grail, we shine a fuckton of good light effects onto that structure at the back. There is no stage flat, there’s the bare stage machinery and whatever sets are there for other productions just lying there in the background. Kundry falls down sobbing at the end, and continues shuddering throughout the time she would normally be dead. After Parsifal holds the grail, chunks of it begin to flake apart, the grail disintegrates in his hands, the various Stijl blocks fall flat on their faces, and the knights rise in jubilation, freed from illusion. Amfortas, struck completely fucking dumb, walks past the set blocks and backstage around the sets, seeking the truth. Parsifal, having found it, kneels while the knights stand up respectfully in front of the real world. Quite meta.

*For Orpheus in the Underworld, there’s a nearly bare stage except for the background, which contains two tapers that taper into one of Brancusi’s “Endless Column.” Brancusi, again, is a favorite of mine, that I can’t imagine why people don’t emulate in set design.
On the top is a giant sunburst motif that glows yellow on Olympus, for a sun, White on earth, for clouds, and Green in hell, for earth. Beneath is a stage for Jupiter’s bed and throne. Beneath that is a giant monkey-bar setup (I don’t know if the singers can clamber, so there’s floors in it) that pillows and fake suds will stream through, in the scene where the gods wake up and bathe. The Gods will sit atop this as they comment on the action. Beneath is a giant platform the functions as Orpheus’ call, the wedding whatsit, and Hades’ throne. It’s filled with wires and satin crinkles to catch light. Beneath that is a staircase and little cage for Erudice. And below that, a bare stage for the dancers and shit.
Jupiter as a fly is a toy remote control helicopter with a speaker attached to it, that the operatic Jupiter sings into. I don’t know how that’ll come off. I was thinking of the Grand Rapids Civic Opera stage for this, that one is uncommonly tall. This and “Nabucco” are the only designs that work best in big-ass pretentious houses.

*”Nabucco” is set in a giant set of fire-escape style palace balconies, with the various characters crossing the classes by running up and infiltrating other character’s spaces. No one stands on the floor until Nebuchadnezzar runs into the building converted.

*”I Mondo Della Luna” is various floors in the house, and rooms the characters do deals in, behind the backs of the father dude. When it turns into the moon, various trippy flowers shoot from sprouting trees, and the earth falls into place in the background.

*Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg,” certainly in my top ten favorite operas of all time (SERIOUSLY, it’s utter fucking epic win all the way through) and defying my imagination… my best idea for this? The only one? That Sach’s cobblery’s patterns of door, anvil, pegboard, table, and bench and shit and various lights should actually be shaped like an anvil. Cool, right?

Description
You all know how I have a passion for opera? Occasionally, I design sets for them as an intellectual exercise. Here's some of my more presentable ones. (No one wants to see "Samson Et Delilah" with the stage rendered as a giant set of tits with a rosary hanging between them and an empty hamster cage at the front, so why did I think THAT one up?)

*Tannhauser Act 1 – two semicircular cushiony blobs flank the side of the stage to enclose the Venusberg in greenery. Flowers and shit poke through the tops, and the resting dancers sit atop them. Atop the gigantic, yonic grotto door carved into the stone, in front of a giant ovoid with forestry designs painted atop it, is a giant tree. On the top is Venus’ barberchair throne, with an extraordinarily long and based footrest. When it comes time for her to sing, she slides down into a standing/lounging position, and returns clambering up the sides. Tannhauser sits to her left in a lower, more comfortable, “Guest” chair on the side of the tree. The stage lights project a yellow oblong against crossing red stripes.
When Tannhauser rebels, he hops onto a neighboring greenery mound, and out the grotto door. Venus jumps out onto his chair, onto the mound, and out the door, trying to stop him (this is so she’s not in the chair when the scene changes). The scene changes in strobe light – the tree split in half and wheels around the back, framing the forest greenery, and the semicircular blobs move behind the tree (there are probably stagehands with wheels hidden in the thing). The shepherd stands behind a hill, the pilgrims move in paths along the stage three times until they get to stage front. THAT’s where Tannhauser joins them.

*Heretic – just an idea I thought up of adapting a libretto of the first seven chapters of Rukis’ ongoing story “Heretic,” up to the birth of Brook and Klaus. It has everything you want in an opera – rich person sets, verismo whatsits, a childbirth, and a scene of a guy getting (SPOILER) pistol-whipped to death.
Act 1 sets – The visiting room of a prison, which morphs into a tailor’s shop and carriage (my stage designs are pretty much unplayable straight) into the garden of a country mansion. Act 2 – The interior of the mansion, including a study, bedroom, pantry, and ballroom. Act 3 – a dueling ground with empty tree in background; then two bedrooms alongside, one of which has a labor going on.

*Carmen – Act 3 starts in a gypsy camp (and has little caravans on a hilltop), to change into the scene outside the bullring in scene 2, the caravans shift stage and a section of the hill unfurls into the outside of the bullring. You need too much space in the esplanades for a crowd, this being Carmen and all.

*Tristan Und Isolde – Act 1 takes place in the royal tent of a ship sailing from Ireland to Cornwall, and contains a medicine chest and whatnot in front of canopy, sail, and bow. (Karajan loved big-ass sails, and everyone, including me, follows his lead.)

*Die Flegende Hollander – Act 1 Daland’s ship moors in a rocky fjord for storm-shelter, then a big-ass ghost ship with blood red sails appears, helmed by a zombie Dutchman. Act 2 is Daland’s house, whose only staging requirements are a big-ass door on stage right for Erik to exit, a big-ass portrait of the aforementioned zombie atop the fireplace, and a fuckton of spinning wheels and an armchair. Seeing as how “tying the spinning wheels together” has already been done, I echo the shape of the wire clouds from act 1 into wire claws that hover above the spinners, threatening to pin Senta to them.
For Act 3, it’s the docks. The sailors celebrate and drink and eat, but the zombie crew just stays in their ship. Needs plenty of open space. The cliff that Senta climbs is the aforementioned dock, which, tacked onto a crane, rises ominously as she climbs it, dragging up with it cliff-face cloth. The Dutchman’s ship collapses into itself like a Hoberman sphere as it recedes into the distance the whole time, but as Senta climbs the cliff, Daland’s ship falls slightly to stage left to suggest distance. Senta “Jumps” by assuming the shape of a crucifixion, and stepping out of a wire frame with tatters of cloth sewn onto it and throwing the frame from the cliff face into the audience. A strobing black light kicks up. She then assumes fetal position on the clifftop, and in the distance the Dutchman and Senta’s ghosts are represented by these same wire molds with clothing, catching abhorrently bright salvation lights, being held aloft by wires. The stage goes red and then blindingly white, with patches of yellow, as Senta’s salvation comes in.

*Parsifal – The forests, the background of the temple and castle, and flower garden are backed by ridiculously flat-looking stage sets – to emphasize their utter fakeness. The forest is marked with several limpid tree shapes; the swan is realistic, hollow, precut and assembled with magnets, and has a bolt of red satin inside for blood. Upon falling to the stage, it will break apart, and Gurnemanz will gesture with the swan’s severed head. The transformation to the grail hall is captured by several mobile glass panes with Vasarely-esque designs. These panes have elaborate bases a la Brancusi’s sculpture bases. The backdrop will slowly lift up, to reveal the hall made of a series of De Stijl blocks painted to represent such columns. The knights will assemble the trees into a communion table, and the boys chorus comes out of the backs of the blocks as they sing. Parsifal and Kundry get little cushiony guest chairs to observe from.
Act 2 opens on an impotently sprawling castle set, made partially out of filled spice racks. The sky behind is a wasteland. When the flower garden appears, de stijl blocks painted to look like Bob Ross/Thrift Store flower paintings are wheeled in and the lighting turns all moiré and shit. A really weird backdrop appears. The perspective on all these paintings don’t quite match up. Various greek statuary and benches litter the place. The spear trick is accomplished by (depending on how good the lights are) a beam of blue light with a point of light made by red and green lights (this’ll be pretty hard) or go the literalist route and have a giant glass tube with holes at the end for the spear to be inserted or removed from (that’s if we’re trying to be dinky, to relieve the tension). The castle disintegrates by all the stijl blocks falling flat on their faces and the flat moving up AFAP, to reveal the dilapidated husk of the castle we opened on.
Act 3 opens on a bare stage flat, the whole area strewn with sticks and broken medicine bottles and balm jars. Gurnemanz pounds a lean beefsteak as he talks. At the very end, back in that grail hall, with Amfortas on the table, when Parsifal uncovers the grail, we shine a fuckton of good light effects onto that structure at the back. There is no stage flat, there’s the bare stage machinery and whatever sets are there for other productions just lying there in the background. Kundry falls down sobbing at the end, and continues shuddering throughout the time she would normally be dead. After Parsifal holds the grail, chunks of it begin to flake apart, the grail disintegrates in his hands, the various Stijl blocks fall flat on their faces, and the knights rise in jubilation, freed from illusion. Amfortas, struck completely fucking dumb, walks past the set blocks and backstage around the sets, seeking the truth. Parsifal, having found it, kneels while the knights stand up respectfully in front of the real world. Quite meta.

*For Orpheus in the Underworld, there’s a nearly bare stage except for the background, which contains two tapers that taper into one of Brancusi’s “Endless Column.” Brancusi, again, is a favorite of mine, that I can’t imagine why people don’t emulate in set design.
On the top is a giant sunburst motif that glows yellow on Olympus, for a sun, White on earth, for clouds, and Green in hell, for earth. Beneath is a stage for Jupiter’s bed and throne. Beneath that is a giant monkey-bar setup (I don’t know if the singers can clamber, so there’s floors in it) that pillows and fake suds will stream through, in the scene where the gods wake up and bathe. The Gods will sit atop this as they comment on the action. Beneath is a giant platform the functions as Orpheus’ call, the wedding whatsit, and Hades’ throne. It’s filled with wires and satin crinkles to catch light. Beneath that is a staircase and little cage for Erudice. And below that, a bare stage for the dancers and shit.
Jupiter as a fly is a toy remote control helicopter with a speaker attached to it, that the operatic Jupiter sings into. I don’t know how that’ll come off. I was thinking of the Grand Rapids Civic Opera stage for this, that one is uncommonly tall. This and “Nabucco” are the only designs that work best in big-ass pretentious houses.

*”Nabucco” is set in a giant set of fire-escape style palace balconies, with the various characters crossing the classes by running up and infiltrating other character’s spaces. No one stands on the floor until Nebuchadnezzar runs into the building converted.

*”I Mondo Della Luna” is various floors in the house, and rooms the characters do deals in, behind the backs of the father dude. When it turns into the moon, various trippy flowers shoot from sprouting trees, and the earth falls into place in the background.

*Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg,” certainly in my top ten favorite operas of all time (SERIOUSLY, it’s utter fucking epic win all the way through) and defying my imagination… my best idea for this? The only one? That Sach’s cobblery’s patterns of door, anvil, pegboard, table, and bench and shit and various lights should actually be shaped like an anvil. Cool, right?