Visuals that can overpower the delicate text and even occasionally seem at odds with the glittery, enrapturing music but that nonetheless are strikingly provocative in a museum-installation kind of way. Call the look postmodern Baroque, a kind of cool Fellini-esque phantasmagoria, done as artsy chic and maximized by Alan Burrett’s ingenious lighting. The outer acts have a single-hue, ghostly wash, with one or several of the central characters in blazing color from head to toe as stark contrast. The second act is a peachy gold, no spectral downside.
Yes, it will offend the traditionalists – those who look for straightforward 18th-century effects. ...

- The Los Angeles Opera's much-anticipated new production of Strauss's "Rosenkavalier" opened on Sunday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and you can bet that the high-concept and boldly stylized sets and costumes by the designer and visual artist Gottfried Helnwein are going to provoke the strongest reactions.
Restraint was not a hallmark of the outlandishly captivating production. In a detailed program note, Helnwein writes that the era of Maria Theresa was a time when everything was theater, at least for the upper class, and that over-the-top fashion styles often included masks and white-face. His designs combine spartan sets with wildly extravagant costumes ranging in style from the surreal to the ridiculous. Act I is bathed in shades of blue. In their stiffly modern blue suits and blue-faced makeup, the Marschallin's notaries look like the members of Blue Man Group. In Act II, the mansion of Herr von Faninal, a wealthy commoner with aristocratic pretensions, glows with garish golden yellows. Faninal's servants could be creatures from "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," no doubt an intentional evocation: the production begins with projected scenes from Robert Wiene's 1926 silent film adaptation of "Der Rosenkavalier," and Wiene also directed "Caligari."
In any event, the cast seemed empowered by the production. ...

The thing you should know about this "Rosenkavalier" is that it is terrific. Richard Strauss' opera sounds great and looks sensational. It is excellently sung, sumptuously conducted by Kent Nagano and, thanks to Gottfried Helnwein, wondrously strange.
Helnwein — the Austrian artist (painter, photographer, performance artist, filmmaker) who has a studio in downtown L.A. — is known for everything from Marilyn Manson videos to Holocaust installations. He is responsible for the sets, costumes and that ad (which, by the way, looks like an image from a recent staging of a Schumann oratorio that Helnwein designed in Düsseldorf).
Helnwein's vision of "Rosenkavalier" is monochromatic and a riot of color. It is oddly traditional yet seriously odd. It is updated but couldn't be more 18th century. And none of those opposites contradicts. ...

Gottfried Helnwein arouses creative tumult. - Los Angeles Times ...

The creator of the alluring image is Production Designer Gottfried Helnwein, who transfers the power and pull of his photographic work (check out www.helnwein.com to get a taste of some of the heaviest, most uncompromising visuals you will see in several lifetimes) to the sets and costumes of Der Rosenkavalier.
Helnwein's poster concept cuts through the traditional coyness and goes straight for the nugget of truth that no doubt had Lesbian and Gay audiences nudging and winking for the past century. With the bold-but-tender image of two gently bussing females, Helnwein gives the casual observer "something to think about." Oh, yes! ...

For the last several months, Downtown-based artist Gottfried Helnwein has switched back and forth between two realities. In his Arts District studio, he works on material to fill gallery and museum shows booked into 2008, all over the world.
Then he steps out into the sunlight, chats in several languages to several friends at a coffee shop on Traction Avenue, and walks to the Los Angeles Opera's costume shop on Alameda Street. Here, he oversees the costumes and sets for Der Rosenkavalier, which opens May 29 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. ...

Schell's collaborators are conductor Kent Nagano and artist Gottfried Helnwein, whose décors mingle contemporary elements — there's an office chair on rollers that the oafish Baron Ochs uses to skitter around in — with the Baroque and Rococo earmarks of the era in which the opera is set, the reign of Maria Theresa.
Even before the opening, however, this collaboration has created something of a stir. Helnwein's eye-catching poster features a close-up of two gorgeous bare-shouldered women just barely kissing — which, technically, captures the opening love scene between the Marschallin and the young nobleman she's involved with, Octavian, who in time-honored "trouser" fashion is played by a mezzo-soprano. "I was trying to get to the work's essence," says Helnwein, now an Angeleno relocated from Vienna. "Two beautiful young people in a tender, magical love scene."
But the photo illustration also suggests "lipstick lesbians" — not exactly what Strauss and Hofmannsthal had in mind. ...

In Richard Strauss' opera, aging aristocrat Marschallin beds the young Octavian. But Octavian's a mezzo-soprano, played by a lady in what opera calls a "trouser role." Helnwein just took the trousers out. In the ad, the women's expressions are tender and their lips mere millimeters apart.
Helnwein isn't surprised by the scuttlebutt in the normally staid opera world.
"I'm used to it," Helnwein said. "It always happens with my work. I don't intend it really, but it happens. I think it has to do with the fact that middle class people usually don't want anything to change. If it could, everything would freeze and stay the same way forever. But artists are very annoying, disturbing guys. They always want to change and mess something up. ...

During Monday’s first “Rosenkavalier” rehearsal with director Max Schell, Edgar Baitzel artistic director assured me a production by the L.A. Opera would always be “of the highest taste,” but the ad by production designer Gottfried Helnwein would give potential audiences “something to think about.” ...

Cover: Portrait by Gottfried Helnwein ...