Gary Hill Stages Fidelio at Opéra de Lyon with Sci-Fi Twist

Video artist Gary Hill directed Beethoven's only opera Fidelio at Opéra de Lyon, presented from March 28 to April 12, 2013, as part of the Justice/Injustice festival. Hill, known for his video work, avoided ostentatious technology and instead created a complex visual abstraction. He blended Fidelio with the 1950s sci-fi epic poem Aniara by Swedish author Harry Martinson, setting the opera aboard a spaceship doomed to eternal drift. The set, modeled from 3D scans of Opéra de Lyon's Italian-style auditorium designed by Jean Nouvel, featured projection screens and monitors. A cylindrical tower represented the AI machine Mima from Martinson's book. Hill attempted to recruit composer Wendy Carlos to electronically reinterpret the score, but she declined, and conductor Kazushi Ono vetoed the idea. Hill collaborated with multimedia animators and Christian Räth as assistant director. The production included avatars of singers in fantastic environments and graphic compositions simulating cosmic events. Opéra de Lyon director Serge Dorny compared Hill's approach to Bill Viola's work on Tristan und Isolde at Opéra de Paris in 2005. A public meeting with Gary Hill took place on April 5 at the Goethe Institut, in partnership with Villa Gillet and Théâtre de la Croix-Rousse.