With the death of Luc Bondy at the age of 67, Scottish Opera lost one of the most gifted stage directors in its history.
He only worked once for the company, on a production of Verdi’s Macbeth in 1999, and its cost was crippling - Scottish Opera, at the time when Richard Armstrong was musical director, took years to recover from it.
But it was worth all the effort on the part of the company and the festival, and it was also seen in Vienna and Bordeaux. Ever since Glyndebourne had launched the very first Edinburgh Festival with Macbeth in 1947, starring the great Margherita Grandi as Lady Macbeth, Verdi’s early drama, very difficult to bring off, had held a special place in Edinburgh’s annals. In the 1970s, Scottish Opera staged it for the first time, in a gory David Pountney production starring Galina Vichnevskaya in a vivid scarlet dress for the supper scene, described by one critic as “a bad night at the Macbeths.”
But Luc Bondy, with Brian McMaster’s support, did it differently, as a pure ensemble piece, as good as they come, in a production in which every movement of every member of the chorus meant something. It was a riveting evening. (Bondy was also a specialist in the Shakespeare play).
Born in Zurich and once described as “Swiss with a twist of French,” Bondy was a man of impeccable cultural pedigree. His grandfather was an impresario in Prague, his father the editor of a French literary magazine, his mother a dancer daunted by the Nazis. In Paris he studied drama and mime under the famous Jacques Lecoq. McMaster, as director of the Edinburgh Festival, had already recognised his brilliance and had presented, to high acclaim, Covent Garden’s full-length five-act version of Verdi’s Don Carlos at the Festival Theatre. His Turn of the Screw, imported later from Aix-en-Provence, was peculiar but undoubtedly haunting, with a Peter Quint who lurched around the stage like Frankenstein’s monster.
But with McMaster’s departure, Bondy’s opera productions in Edinburgh came to a halt. By then his career was expanding internationally, in Vienna, Paris, New York - though his Tosca at the Met was loathed by the conservative audience, accustomed to the ornate lavishness of Franco Zefirrelli. Facing a torrent of booing on the opening night, he tersely informed the audience that he was scandalised by the fact that they were scandalised. The production survives around the world. Bondy died last month, having suffered from cancer for most of his professional life.
13 December 2015
He only worked once for the company, on a production of Verdi’s Macbeth in 1999, and its cost was crippling - Scottish Opera, at the time when Richard Armstrong was musical director, took years to recover from it.
But it was worth all the effort on the part of the company and the festival, and it was also seen in Vienna and Bordeaux. Ever since Glyndebourne had launched the very first Edinburgh Festival with Macbeth in 1947, starring the great Margherita Grandi as Lady Macbeth, Verdi’s early drama, very difficult to bring off, had held a special place in Edinburgh’s annals. In the 1970s, Scottish Opera staged it for the first time, in a gory David Pountney production starring Galina Vichnevskaya in a vivid scarlet dress for the supper scene, described by one critic as “a bad night at the Macbeths.”
But Luc Bondy, with Brian McMaster’s support, did it differently, as a pure ensemble piece, as good as they come, in a production in which every movement of every member of the chorus meant something. It was a riveting evening. (Bondy was also a specialist in the Shakespeare play).
Born in Zurich and once described as “Swiss with a twist of French,” Bondy was a man of impeccable cultural pedigree. His grandfather was an impresario in Prague, his father the editor of a French literary magazine, his mother a dancer daunted by the Nazis. In Paris he studied drama and mime under the famous Jacques Lecoq. McMaster, as director of the Edinburgh Festival, had already recognised his brilliance and had presented, to high acclaim, Covent Garden’s full-length five-act version of Verdi’s Don Carlos at the Festival Theatre. His Turn of the Screw, imported later from Aix-en-Provence, was peculiar but undoubtedly haunting, with a Peter Quint who lurched around the stage like Frankenstein’s monster.
But with McMaster’s departure, Bondy’s opera productions in Edinburgh came to a halt. By then his career was expanding internationally, in Vienna, Paris, New York - though his Tosca at the Met was loathed by the conservative audience, accustomed to the ornate lavishness of Franco Zefirrelli. Facing a torrent of booing on the opening night, he tersely informed the audience that he was scandalised by the fact that they were scandalised. The production survives around the world. Bondy died last month, having suffered from cancer for most of his professional life.
13 December 2015
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