Europe's fetish for staging traditional, staid opera in modern, Metropolis hubs -- like offstage productions of Bohème in Hochhaus Bern and Traviata in Hauptbahnhof Zürich -- makes for alluring metaphor: both opera and transportation stations are gateways to aspirational travel, whether it be through the librettist's transcendent quill or a commuter's escapist fantasies. We've indulged in both.
Tonight, opera goes offsite again for the Salzburger Festspiele's staging of Mozart's Die Entführung under twelve-hundred tons of steel and 380 tons of curved glass at Salzburg Airport's Hangar 7. The backdrop will span ten public spaces, including the hangar's collection of historic airplanes (like a WWII-era P-38 Lightning) collected by historic aircraft enthusiasts The Flying Bulls.
Director Adrian Marthaler, who previously collaborated with the Hauptbahnhof Zürich Traviata, updates 18th century Turkey and the sultan's harem to a modern-day fashion house complete with catwalks, seamstress workshops and photoshoot sets inhabited by photographers, models and stylists. Pasha Selim (orated by Tobias Moretti) is a fashion house designer, Blonde (Rebecca Nelsen) is a makeup artist/stylist and 'Stanze (Desirée Rancatore) is a bourgeois girl seduced by the glitter of the jet-set lifestyle.
Dressed by Viennese fashion designer Lena Hoschek's costumes and tracked by 16 cameras and 200 technical staff, Die Entführung will be filmed live and streamed at 20.15 GMT+1.
A portentous theme in the run-up to the September fashion shows, fashion pirates will give our predictable Milan Fashion Week stress nightmares a whole new level of terror!