Sellars, Peter

Peter Sellars was born on September 27, 1957 in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA) into a wealthy and intelligent family (his parents are a radio producer and an English teacher) ^[1] . He became interested in classical music in early childhood. At the age of five, he received a conductor’s stick and a special remote control from his father, from which he “conducted” recordings of Ludwig Beethoven ’s symphonies performed by Arturo Toscanini . Another hobby of the boy was zoology , he worked part time at the Pittsburgh Zoo and at the Museum of Natural History, where he was especially attracted by snakes. He was a student in the puppet Lovelace Marionette Theater , but due to his small age (10 years) he was allowed to work with dolls only for the fourth year of study and for a long time his duties were limited to raising and lowering the curtain ^[2] .

At the age of 18, while living in Paris , he joined the International Union of Puppet Theater Workers - Union International de la Marionettes. He attended the congress of this organization in Moscow , where he was strongly influenced by the theater of Sergei Obraztsov and he became acquainted with the national traditions of the puppet theater of the peoples of the USSR .

He studied at the elite Phillips Academy in Massachusetts . He graduated from Harvard University in 1981 . In his youth, he was greatly influenced by the Russian avant-garde of the 20s of the XX century : Vladimir Mayakovsky , Velimir Khlebnikov , Kazimir Malevich , Vsevolod Meyerhold , Sergey Eisenstein (but Sellars graduate research was dedicated to the last year of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s work). The director considers the famous Slavicist Yuri Strederter to be his teacher at Harvard. In his final production of William Shakespeare's play "Anthony and Cleopatra" was played in the swimming pool. While still a student, he staged a version of Richard Wagner 's Ring of the Nibelung for the puppet theater ^[3] .

After college, Sellars traveled to India , China and Japan with the goal of exploring the Asian theater.

At the age of 26, he became the director of the American National Theater in Washington .

The director considers his first half-time experience of addressing the musical theater to be his semi-stage productions of the cantatas of I. S. Bach in the Church of St. Emanuel in Boston. This church provided shelter for the homeless; every Saturday there were meetings of the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous. The church allowed the young director, who does not have the means to rent the premises, to arrange a rehearsal base here and show the performances to the public. Sellars himself believes that communicating with this audience, which became the first spectator of his productions, changed his views on the opera house ^[4] .

Sellars staged opera performances on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera , the Royal Theater in Madrid , the Glyndeborn Festival , the Mariinsky Theater , the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater (Queen of the Indians by Henry Purcell, this unfinished opera of the composer became a joint production of the Perm Theater, the Royal Theater in Madrid and English National Opera ^[5] ), Chicago Lyric Opera , Finnish National Opera , Paris National Opera , San Francisco Opera. He staged opera performances for the Salzburg Festival , for the International Festival in Manchester , for the Stars of the White Nights festival in St. Petersburg ( Tristan and Isolda by Richard Wagner at the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall), for the music festival in Ohai ( California ), and the Edinburgh Theater festival .

He works with major conductors: Valery Gergiev , Esa-Pekka Salonen , Theodor Currentzis ^[6] , William Christie , Gustavo Dudamel ...

The semi-scenic interpretations by the director of the oratorios of the Baroque era were recognized as interesting, the particular success fell on the production of the oratorio by G. F. Handel “Theodore” (2000, conductor William Christie , Glyndebourne Festival Opera) and the oratorio by I. S. Bach “Passion for Matthew” with Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (2010, conductor Simon Rattle ).

Peter Sellars was the leader of major festivals: the Los Angeles Arts Festival (1990 and 1993), the Adelaide Arts Festival ( Australia , 2000) and the Venice Theater Festival ( Italy , 2003 ), New Crowned Hope (Vienna) , Austria , 2006 ) in honor of the 250th anniversary of V.A. Mozart.

The director actively collaborates with modern composers. He performed at different times the productions of the operas by Kaya Saariaho , Osvaldo Golihov , Olivier Messiane , György Ligeti , George Krum , almost all the operas of John Adams .

Sellars continues to work on theater productions. In 1994, he successfully staged Shakespeare's Venetian Merchant at the Bobigny Theater in Paris, and then in 2009 Othello , where black artists played all the roles, Chicanos played the title character. The director deliberately tried to cause the audience to associate with the fate of Barack Obama . His production of Tony Morrison 's play Desdemona in 2011 was recognized as interesting. Sellers himself proposed the idea of ​​the play to the writer. It tells the story of Othello from the point of view of Desdemona. The performance takes place during the African ritual of commemoration of the dead and is accompanied by a chorus of Malian girls ^[7] .

Peter Sellars is a professor in the Department of World Art and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles . He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Sellars' work with the composer began in 1985 . The first experience of their collaboration was the production of the opera “Nixon in China” in Houston in October 1987 on Alice Goodman’s libretto about the meeting of Richard Nixon with Mao Zedong in February 1972 . It was a co-production of the Houston Grand Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Netherlands Opera and the Washington Opera. The idea of ​​the opera belongs to Sellars, who proposed it back in 1985. Then Adams met the proposal disapprovingly, but then appreciated. First, in May 1987, a concert version was presented and a public discussion was organized during the intermission , a copy of the libretto was prudently sent to the former President Nixon himself (the producers were afraid of a negative reaction to the political interpretation of the events in the opera). Only after the approval of the audience and the official authorities was the stage version ready for that time shown. Later, the opera was presented in New York and Washington , as well as in opera houses in Europe. In 1990, Sellars made a new version of the opera to take into account the changing relationship between the United States and China after the events in Tiananmen ^[8] .

The next fruit of the collaboration between Adams and Goodman was the opera "The Death of Klinghoffer" on the plot of the 1985 seizure of a cruise ship "Achille Lauro" by Palestinian terrorists. The idea of ​​the opera was again proposed by Sellars, he also acted as a director. The performance was a co-production of the Royal Theater de la Monnet, Opera of San Francisco, Lyon Opera, Los Angeles Festival, Gleinburn Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music. The premiere of the production of Sellars took place at the Royal Theater de la Monnet ( Brussels ) in March 1991 . Although the authors stated their neutral political stance, accusations of anti-Semitism were heard against Adams, Sellars and Goodman.

In 1995, Sellars staged Adams' opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. The opera takes place after the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. The heroes of the opera are representatives of various social strata and ethnic groups of the United States.

In December 2000, Sellars premiered Adams' next opera, The Infant Christ (El niño), at the Chatelet Theater in Paris. This time Peter Sellars acted as a co-author of the libretto, the author of the idea of ​​creating an opera and director, and Adams dedicated the opera itself to it ^[9] . The production of the opera takes place against the background of the movie screen, on which the Nativity of Christ is related to the story of a young couple of Hispanics and the birth of their child, and tramps turn out to be magi . The opera is performed in Spanish and English, interspersed with Latin texts. The Sellret libretto used works by Hildegard of Bingensky , Juana Ines de la Cruz , Gabriela Mistral , Rosario Castellanos, Vicente Widobro , Ruben Dario ^[10] .

The opera Atomic Doctor (Doctor Atom), staged in October 2005 at the San Francisco Opera ^[11] , tells of the events of the creation of the atomic bomb. It is dedicated to the personality of Robert Oppenheimer and talks about his role in the implementation of the Manhattan project . Again, Sellars acted as a librettist and stage director ^[12] , although she began work on the libretto Alice Goodman, who then left the project due to her disagreement with the interpretation of events. Most of the text of the opera was taken from declassified US government documents and correspondence between scientists, statesmen and generals who were involved in the project. The verses of Charles Baudelaire , John Donne , quotes from the Bhagavad Gita and traditional songs of the Pueblo Indians were also used .

In November 2006, the premiere (in the Vienna MuseumsQuartier Hall) of Adams' opera “A Flowering Tree” on the plot of a South Indian legend resembling Mozart 's “Magic Flute” ^[13] . Sellars acted as a librettist and stage director.

The most recent collaboration is The Gospel According to the Other Mary. The premiere was prepared by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. The premiere was given on March 8, 2013 in Los Angeles, and on March 20 was shown at the Lucerne Music Festival ^[14] . Sellars owns the libretto and the production of the opera ^{[15] [16]} . In addition to canonical texts, he used the memoirs of Dorothy Day , the works of Primo Levy , Ruben Dario, Rosario Castellanos and other poets.

The director is interested in feature films. In 1987, he starred in the movie of Jean-Luc Godard “King Lear” (in this film he also acted as a screenwriter, but is not indicated in the credits) ^[17] . In the same year, he played a cameo role of the Guest in the movie “Happy New Year” by John Evildsen . Sellars repeatedly appeared in episodic roles in television series: The Equalizer (The Equalizer, as Woody, 1 episode, 1988), The Miami Police: Morale Department (as Dr. Ohara, 1 episode, 1985), where the directors exploited his unusual image.

In 1991, Peter Sellars made the film “Doctor Ramirez’s Cabinet” (a co-production of France, Germany, the USA and Great Britain ) with the participation of Mikhail Baryshnikov , who played the role of Sesnambula Cesar ^[18] . Other cult figures took part in the creation of the film: the music for the film belongs to John Adams (which is complemented by Tibetan tunes), the main female role was played by Joan Cusack , the main male role was Peter Gallagher , the film was directed by George Tsypin , cameraman David Watkin , one of The producers became David Lynch . The film itself is a free interpretation of the classic plot of Robert Wiener 's film "Doctor Caligari's Study" (Germany, 1920 ). The film is transferred to the present, it takes place in Manhattan during the financial crisis. Paying tribute to the silent original, the characters of the film do not utter a single word, passing each other along the course of action only the prophetic notes of the somnambulist, which serve as the few captions for the film. The film was presented at the Sundance Film Festival , at the Stockholm International Film Festival and participated in the competition program of this festival in the nomination Best Director ^[19] . Sellers himself describes the film ^[20] :

“The film consists of a series of parallel episodes that will be interpreted differently by each viewer. They are connected by a world of pure color, sound, light, emotions and human presence. "

The film aroused the interest of film critics, but a wide audience ignored it.

Sellars took part in the filming of the episode of the television series “Independent Lens” (2008), where he spoke about the production of John Adams’s opera Atomic Doctor.

The work of Peter Sellars is dedicated to the documentary film “Peter Sellars: Portrait” (Russia, Canada , 1998 , directed by Marina Goldovskaya ) ^[21] . Sellars was one of the artistic directors of the Telluride International Film Festival ^[22] .

Sellars is characterized by an experimental, often shocking viewer, approach to opera and theater productions. He freely transfers the action of a play or opera at the present or even in the future, modernizes its content. For this, he was repeatedly criticized, including by the composers themselves, whose operas he staged. So György Ligeti sharply negatively assessed the staging of his opera Le Grand Macabre in Salzburg in 1997 ^[23] . At the same time, the press suspected that the composer (who was in the hall during the rehearsals and did not express dissatisfaction) tried to draw increased attention to it. Enthusiastic reviews about the productions of his operas Love from afar and Alma Mater by the director were given by Kaya Saariaho.

Here is what Peter Sellars himself claims about his work ^[5] :

“I want to keep intimacy, tenderness, poetry, especially in the age of the Internet, when people nowadays only touch the plastic keys on the computer. In music, intimacy seems to me especially important when a person, for example, touches a string of a lute with his finger. This tension is so sensual, so beautiful, sensations awaken, and you feel this incredible intimacy of touch. Therefore, it is very important for me how the characters touch each other on the stage, how true human contact arises. Not only the moment of touch, but also the emotions that people share. ”

• "Tristan and Isolde" by Richard Wagner. In 2003, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen came up with a project for an unusual production of the opera. Peter Sellars joined the project as a director. The video installation was commissioned by Bill Viola ^[24] . It was created by Bill Viola Studio in collaboration with the Paris National Opera, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, the Lincoln Center , the James Cohan Gallery and Haunch of Vension (London). The premiere took place in 2004 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles) ^[25] , and then in April 2005 in Paris at the Opera de Bastille . The entertainment of the action was minimized, the pace of the artists' movements was slowed down, the action itself took place against the background of images of fire and water used in a gigantic installation. In the fall of 2005, Valery Gergiev began to conduct performances instead of Salonen, who attracted soloists, an orchestra and a chorus of the Mariinsky Theater. In this version, the play was shown in Rotterdam . In 2008, two performances of the production were held with great success at the Mariinsky Concert Hall. The main parts were performed by Gary Lehman, Susan Foster and Rene Pape . For performance in St. Petersburg, a simplified semi-stage version of the production of Sellars was made ^[26] . Peter Sellars specially for the booklet for the performance in St. Petersburg prepared his own presentation of the plot of the opera, which differs from the traditional one ^[27] .
• “Iolanthe” by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and “Persephone” by Igor Stravinsky . A coproduction of the 2012 Royal Theater in Madrid with the Bolshoi Theater . Conductor - Theodor Currentzis, Production Designer - George Tsypin. It was assumed that the first production will be held in Madrid , and then will be shown on the Moscow stage in 2014. "Iolanta" was set extremely ascetic, the characters are dressed in black clothes of a modern cut. "Persephone" was interpreted as a mystery , a troupe of dancers from Cambodia was involved in its execution. Both operas were in the same scenery ^[28] .
• "Queen of the Indians" Henry Purcell at the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater named after P.I. Tchaikovsky. Theodoros Currentzis was the conductor and art director of the production, and the set designer was Gronk. Peter Sellars owns a new concept of the opera ^[29] : vocal numbers with the original text by John Dryden are supplemented by the recitation of excerpts from the novel of the modern Nicaraguan writer Rosario Aguilar “The Lost Chronicles of terra firma”. The incomplete opera includes other independent secular and spiritual works by Purcell. The performance was awarded two Golden Masks. In 2013, in the “Event of the Year” nomination, he became a laureate of the Russian theater prize Casta Diva .

• 1983 year. McArthur Scholarship for creativity and high creativity.
• 1998 year. Erasmus Award for a combination of European and American traditions in opera and theater productions.
• 2005 year. The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for “an outstanding contribution to understanding the life and beauty of the world” ^[30] .
• year 2014. Polar Music Prize (sometimes called the Nobel Music Prize, the monetary content of the prize is SEK 1,000,000).
• 2015 year. Golden mask for the best opera performance and personally to Peter Sellars for the best directing of the opera performance (Queen of the Indians, Henry Purcell) ^[31] .

• The director claims that every day he views the American newspapers Guardian , The New York Times , Democracy Now , the French newspaper Le Monde diplomatique , to have not only information about world events, but also a wide range of opinions about them.
• Peter Sellers likes to attend second-hand stores , acquiring unusual and strange wardrobe items for himself and his friends there, primarily shirts.
• The director loves to shock others with his unusual appearance ^[32] :

“Peter Sellars is known for his extravagance. I drew attention to an unusually dressed man a few days before the concert performance. He was somewhat unimaginable and was all wrapped up in a huge shawl to the floor, worn by very old grandmothers when they were cold. His whole robe (stale and colorful shirt and vest) was covered with huge and incredibly long beads, and something like a helipad flaunted on his head - that was Sellars. ”

• The director's hobby is traveling. India made a special impression ^[2] :

“When I was twenty-one, I went to India and at six in the morning on the banks of the Ganges in the city of Varanasi (Holy City) my life changed. At six in the morning. This is a city where corpses are burned, where a crematorium and smoke. Dead bodies float along the river and at the same time, people bring their babies here to bathe. Babies are next to the bodies of the dead, and the sky is dark with smoke from the crematorium, and vultures circling over the river, looking for flesh. And you are there, at the beginning and end of the world at the same time. ”

• Showed in the animated series The Simpsons (Season 29) Series 2, Springfield Splendor

• Freeman, John. The Greatest Shows on Earth: World Theater from Peter Brook to the Sydney Olympics. Oxford 2014.
• Meyer-Thoss, Gottfried. Extrakte. Peter Sellars - Amerikanisches Welttheater. Berlin Parthas Verlag. 2004.
• Lucasta Miller. Rock me Amadeus. Interview with Peter Sellars. The Guardian. June 3, 2006.