[This is part of a series profiling the artists making their COC debuts in the 2011/2012 season]
"I want it to be 70 per cent beautiful, 15 per cent surrealistically beautiful, and the rest so beautiful that nobody can bear it." – Zhang Huan on Semele
Name: Zhang Huan
Practice: Visual and performance artist
Where he's from: An Yang City, He Nan Province, China
What he's directing: He'll be directing Handel's Semele, at the COC from May 9 to 26.
Where he's been: Semele is the first opera he's directed. As a visual and performance artist, he's had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Max Protetch Gallery, New York; Galerie Albert Benamou, Paris; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Haunch of Venison, London and Zurich; and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery here in Toronto, among others.
Links
Watch and Listen
From the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, an interview with Zhang Huan (the interview starts approximately 10 minutes into the video):
Here's a video preview of Semele from its premiere at Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels.
This video shows many of Zhang Huan's best-known sculptural, photographic and performance works.
Photo: Zhang Huan
Posted by Cecily Carver / in Semele / comments (1) / permalink
Sara Fulgoni in the COC production of Bluebeard's Castle. Photo: Michael Cooper © 2001