By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Amy Okinaga works on a statue made from a mannequin.
They have built the sets for this weekend's opera, "L'Italiana in Algeri" (The Italian Girl in Algiers), and the results are spectacular. The sets fool and delight the eye, and enhance the madcap atmosphere of the story.
The farce features a basic battle of the sexes. The men have the bluster and brawn; the women, brains and beauty.
Reflecting elaborate ornamentation and artifice of Gioacchino Rossini's music, the sets capture the fantastical exoticism with which early 19th artists viewed the non-European world. Fixed and interchangeable scenic elements, bathed in hues of salmon and aqua, create the sunbaked warmth of sandstone and the cool solidity of marble and tile.
For American opera companies, building new sets has grown rare while renting or exchanging old sets has become common practice. Yet the HOT continues to put on at least one new-from-the-ground-up production each Grand Opera Season. And every year, it seems the homegrown sets are the best ones.
Why undertake the mammoth task of designing and building a new production? Set designer Peter Dean Beck and director of production Gary Anderson shed some light on the process.
"It costs a lot of money, but it makes a better show," said Beck in a backstage interview last week. "The relationship between the design and the dramatic event is something that is really best accomplished with an original design."
The high quality workmanship of HOT's scene shop makes the realization of Beck's designs possible.
"The opera company has a terrific shop," said Beck. New general and artistic director Henry Akina agreed: "The scene shop is one of our greatest resources."
Continuity of personnel contributes to the teamwork necessary for excellence.
"This is a collaborative art form," emphasized Beck, who has designed HOT sets for more than a decade. "You need to get together on what your priorities are and what you're trying to do to bring (an opera) to life."
Anderson has run the shop, now located in Kakaako, for 14 years. Many of the tradesmen have built HOT sets for more than 20 years. After working together for so long, noted Anderson, everybody knows each other's strengths and weaknesses.
The design process begins with the music, and the visual world emerges from the musical world.
"When you take the score, that's the effect, and we have to make the cause," explained Beck. "We have to create a world that produces these words and this music. So we work backwards from the material."
Before making the first round of sketches, Beck and the director -in this case, another HOT veteran, Matthew Lata - collaborate on an artistic vision for the opera. The sparseness of stage direction in the "L'Italiana" score presents a stimulating challenge.
"There's a lot of latitude in Rossini, and you have to bring a lot to it," said Beck.
Beck and Lata took their cues from the lavish and florid singing that characterizes this opera.
"I'm attempting to have a visual statement of the musical style," said Beck. "We're making a point of the artifice and ornamentation of it all because that's musically what's happening."
What: "L'Italiana in Algeri"