English National Opera, St. Martin’s Lane, London
December 2018
The English National Opera’s production of War Requiem featured sets and visual design by Wolfgang Tillmans. There were five evening performances from November 22 through December 7, 2018 at the English National Opera in St Martin’s Lane, London.
Benjamin Britten’s choral masterpiece from 1962 pairs the antiwar poetry of World War I soldier Wilfred Owen (who died a week before Armistice) with the Latin Requiem Mass, for an opera that is a "passionate outcry against man’s inhumanity to man." This production includes the full English National Opera orchestra, an eighty-person chorus, a children’s choir, a chamber orchestra, and three soloists. As set designer, Tillmans was responsible for "every item and visual you see on stage."
This was Tillmans’s debut at the English National Opera. As the artist explained, "It’s been a steep learning curve and a roller coaster of experiences in theatreland. To underscore War Requiem’s ongoing relevance, I invited Nasir Mazhar as costume designer, with whom we developed costumes that are not fixed in a specific time period of the last hundred years. The different scenes are created with three movable, eight-meter-tall LED walls and a twenty-meter-wide back projection screen, all specifically designed for this production. I thank everyone at ENO for their incredible trust, support, and enthusiasm in making this project possible."
Creative Team: Conductor: Martyn Brabbins, Director: Daniel Kramer, Set Designer: Wolfgang Tillmans, Costume Designer: Nasir Mazhar, Lighting Designer: Charles Balfour
Images: English National Opera's production of War Requiem, November 2018
