(Image: Marco Brescia)
Official Teatro alla Scala partner Shiseido, entering its second year as the first beauty company in the theater's history to share the unique role, was on make-up duty for the massive ballet corps during the run of grand ballet Raymonda, which closed last night at Milan's opera house.
OC was at opening night (along wiht Carla Fracci, review on Grazia.it's Stasera Esco here) for the revival of the late-19th century masterpiece and was mesmerized by the meticulous costumes (more than 500), razor-sharp ballet skills, and grand pageantry.
Shiseido's make-up team dipped into the original sketches extracted from the library archives at Harvard and the theater library in St. Petersburg that were used for the inaugural 1898 production. Inspiration was based on Russia's Imperial period at the end of the 19th century as well as strong female figures: Oscar Wilde's Salome, Mata Hari, the women in Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings, and Laura Antonelli in Visconti's L'innocente.
The look was about natural skin and strong black brows and eyes, accentuated by a Shiseido cream eye shadow called Black Caviar. As if make-up wasn't delicious enough, Shiseido dares us to eat its Black Caviar with a dollop of crème fraîche.
(Backstage Shiseido at Raymonda Teatro alla Scala -- Eris Nezha and Marta Romanga -- Luca Chiaudano/Photomovie)
(Backstage Shiseido at Raymonda Teatro alla Scala -- Eris Nezha and Marta Romanga -- Luca Chiaudano/Photomovie)
(Image: Marco Brescia)