AOP Spotlight
Tom Phillips
Tom Phillips (librettist), currently in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ as a Director’s Visitor, is known not only for his paintings, which can be seen in the collections of most major museums, but also for his own musical compositions, theater and experimental television work. He is the librettist and scenic designer for Tarik O'Regan's opera, Heart of Darkness, currently in development with American Opera Projects.
With the such a multifaceted career in the visual and performing arts, what led you to take on writing your first libretto?
What appeals to me and the whole business of turning Heart of Darkness into an opera, why I wanted to to make a libretto, is I found opera, in my experience, the most naturalistic of all mediums that are available for artistic expression. It might sound strange because one thinks of it perhaps as the most artificial of all. (And Tolstoy describes it as the most outrageously spendthrift of all.) All sorts of people have various attitudes toward opera, but for me it is the most naturalistic. It is the way we are. I think in normal life it’s impossible to express ourselves with the true passion of our feelings otherwise we’d all be hysterical all the time. In opera, you’re allowed to be hysterical all the time and express exactly what you feel.
Tom, your work as a designer, librettist, composer of your own material must add a vocal richness in the relationship you have with Tarik and have been informative about visualizing what this piece might be.
I didn’t visualize the whole piece because that’s not the job of the librettist. It’s not even the job of the designer. In my own opinion, the person who visualizes the piece is the director who then asks the designer to make possible what he sees and what he imagines.
Talk us through some of these preliminary designs for Heart of Darkness (above). You have created a set that can be transformed into a variety of scenes.
Yes, I did design a very small fit-up thing that could be made into scaffolding or could be made into sitting poles in the middle of the jungle itself in the Congo. It’s just a lattice. It’s a kind of imitation boat, although it’s the skeleton of a boat, and underneath can be various doors and orifices and offices, whatever you like. [You have] the ladder which is boat-like itself and [you have] a handrail on the first floor so that people can be seen to be on the top of the boat, as they are at the beginning on the Thames talking to each other. You can create a little house, the house of the Intended and so forth. With proper lighting you can do all sorts of amazing things.
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Tom Phillips
From the Heart of Darkness panel discussion, Nov 2006 at the Institute for Advanced Study.
www.tomphillips.co.uk
Click for more info on Heart of Darkness
A staged workshop of Heart of Darkness will be presented in London in August 2008 in collaboration with OperaGenesis.
Opera Holland Park's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, designed by Tom Phillips, directed by Simon Callow, and conducted by Jane Glover will perform June 28 - July 12 in England.
