Opera
November 4 – 28, 2010
Bjoerling’s Larynx, aka OPERA records the interiors of world-famous opera houses, all photographed with 4×5” and 8×10” Arca-Swiss cameras to maximize detail. Architecturally meticulous, this body of work serves to historically document these national and cultural landmarks. To date, I have photographed 40+ opera houses in Europe and the Americas.
The project is titled after Jussi Björling, a Swedish operatic tenor and arguably the best singer of the century – known for his technique, feeling and the range of his voice. Bjoerling debuted at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm and eventually became a principal at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. These two spaces – and the others that I have photographed thus far – are the spaces in which my grandfather, Anton Gutman, never got the chance to perform. Gutman was a cantor trained right after World War II by Helge Rosvaenge, a famous Danish operatic tenor who sang regularly with the State Operas in Berlin and Vienna. While Gutman was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Soviet Union, he performed for prisoners and officers. Nearly a half-century later, I grew up listening to him sing while he walked around our living room. As the son of two architects, I experience an almost religious feeling walking into a grand space such as an opera house.
The opera houses in Bjoerling’s Larynx stand as symbols of their nations’ wealth and grandeur, their dedication to the promotion of the arts and to bringing communities together. They are spaces with history – architecture like the National Theater, Prague State Opera, and Estates Theater in Prague or the Hungarian State Theater in Budapest that were universally recognized as being so powerful they were left standing through wars, or – like Dresden’s Semperoper and Vienna’s Wiener Staatsoper – which, though bombed, were rebuilt as symbols of their nations’ perseverance. They include a Guinness Book of World Records roundup of superlatives like The Metropolitan Opera in New York – unrivaled in size, and The Real Teatro di San Carlo in Naples – the oldest continually active opera house. There are theaters such as The Palais Garnier in Paris, with a ceiling that served as the canvas for controversial artist Marc Chagall and a chandelier that – after it fell in 1896 – served as the inspiration for The Phantom of the Opera. They are houses like La Scala in Milan that have resounded with the music of Verdi, Rossini, and Bellini, or The Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, where works by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky Korsakov premiered. They are architectural statements such as Teatro Amazonas – erected in the middle of the jungle from materials imported from across the Atlantic – built to assert Manaus, Brazil in South America as a cultural center rivaling those in Europe.
Like the Bechers and Candida Höfer, I have photographed each house systematically from the spot at center stage where a performer would stand. In the same manner as which the voice of each famous singer projects and bounces off ornate private boxes and resonates under painted trompe l’oeil ceilings, the light in the opera house strikes each of these features and returns to the camera, affixing them to film. Lit solely by the existing chandeliers and lamps, each opera house has been composed with the first row of seats acting as a base at the bottom of the frame to just above where the chandelier meets the ceiling at the top, everything is in focus from the front to the back of the house. The upper balcony is anchored to the top corners of the frame as much as possible while the ends of the rows of orchestra seats anchor the bottom corners. Though the proportion of the spaces varies, the goal is to attain both lateral and vertical symmetry in each image, thus flattening out the space in perfect equilibrium. The resulting view is an impossible one for the naked eye, but the camera allows both line-of-sight and periphery to come together in a single frame. This gives the effect – when one stands in front of the mural-sized prints – of being surrounded by the space.
The photographs in Bjoerling’s Larynx freeze for eternity the instant before a performance takes place. Viewers are invited to pour over details, to feel the potential energy in a space where it is all just about to happen. The actual performance is just a part of the overall awe-inspiring experience of going to the theater – I believe that the space itself can be the event.
John Pancake from The Washington Post describes La Fenice, Venice’s opera house, which has been rebuilt following two separate fires and is now the only such opera house in existence in a city that once housed twelve:
La Fenice is one of the things that holds Venice’s idea of itself together…. Inside, it is a place of staggering opulence with gilded filigree, crimson upholstery, bare-breasted nymphs and a swirl of fantasy. Five tiers of boxes line the horseshoe-shaped theater. Traditionally, wealthy nobles entertained inside these ornate stalls, glancing at the opera only now and then. If you stand in the middle of the theater, it feels very much as if you’ve been encircled by Marie Antoinette’s wedding cake.
Peeling gold leaf reveals the age of The Met, the trompe l’oeil of the red curtains of the Palais Garnier – which are painted on wooden slats – is betrayed by chipping paint, the velvet lining of the boxes at La Scala is flipped upward during cleaning, a mysterious mannequin is seated in the upper mezzanine of The Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, a rehearsal table with a tiny lamp remains in the center aisle of the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg, and period innovations like the wave machine and ship set remain onstage at the Drottningholm Palace Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden. Though at first glance these photographs appear to be scientific and categorical, it is the details included in these images that make them more than sterile architectural interiors – they become portraits of spaces with remarkable depth and history.
Born in 1978, David Leventi grew up in Chappaqua, New York, and Nantucket, Massachusetts. In 2001, he received his BFA in Photography from Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. From 2002 to 2008, Leventi assisted Robert Polidori in his studio and on international shoots. His photographs have been widely published in Vanity Fair, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, BlackBook, Travel & Leisure, Best Life, Forbes, I.D. Magazine, New York, LIFE, and Time Out New York. Leventi’s personal work includes retracing his family’s history and his great-grandfather’s resistance to fascism and communism in Romania, which was featured as a photo essay in the second issue of Culture + Travel magazine (Nov/Dec 2006). Leventi was selected by Photo District News as one of 2007’s Top 30 Emerging Photographers. In 2008, his work was included in Communication Arts Photography Annual and in American Photography 24 as well as receiving two Graphis Gold awards and being listed among Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50 Finalists.
Opera appears at Blue Sky courtesy of Bonni Benrubi Gallery.