The paris opera ahead2/24/2023 ![]() They include regulars such as the people of the wardrobe department - seen in a short montage of shots in which tasks such as washing and ironing are as performed in visually suggestive threesomes - as well as on-off helpers such as the men leading a live bull onstage during a performance of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron. ![]() ![]() Instead of working strictly chronologically, Bron and editor Julie Lena have organized their scenes in clusters that suggest that a lot of different things are going on at any one time, as the various shows require long rehearsal periods for the performers and minute preparation from countless, usually unseen collaborators. He’s also a hard worker who is realistic about the quality or lack thereof of his own performances. Timoshenko is a sympathetic and occasionally wide-eyed male ingénue who is formidably talented and has a clear eagerness to learn. We follow him from his audition for Opera brass to his period at the institution and from speaking no French when he arrives to his increasing ease with the language and his new home. The closest non-Opera patrons have to a protagonist and possible audience substitute - because he too arrives knowing absolutely nothing about the Paris Opera - is Micha Timoshenko, a dashing young Russian bass-baritone. With dance reduced to a supporting part, there is thus more room for the people involved in the production of operas and concerts. But for people with no background knowledge of his conflicts with at least some of his dancers, there is now too little material in Bron’s documentary to really get a proper sense of what caused all the friction and strange press conferences that were meant to calm the press and general public but instead only created more question marks and confusion. Admirably, Bron has decided to let Millepied, arguably the most famous name in his cast, play only a minor role, perhaps also because dance at he Paris Opera was already covered so extensively by Wiseman and Millepied himself was the subject of the 2016 documentary Reset, which chronicles the creation of the choreographer’s first ballet at the Paris Opera. ![]()
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