Terry Gilliam's Opera Production "Benvenuto Cellini"

[Wellesnet]

Besides getting his long-awaited Don Quixote film back on track, director Terry Gilliam has recently directed a production of Hector Berlioz's opera "Benvenuto Cellini" in Britain. This is Gilliam's second time at directing Opera, the first being Berlioz's "The Damnation of Faust" in 2009. Both productions have been well-received, and both have Wellesian connections. Orson Welles and The Mercury staged Faustus in New York in 1937, although his Faust was based on Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan drama (published in 1604), whereas Berlioz's opera uses the famous 1808 play by Goethe.

"Benvenuto Cellini", on the other hand, was a film project of Welles's that never came to fruition, according to Brett Wood's Bio-bibliography of Welles. It's not known whether Welles would have tried to film Berlioz's 1837 opera, or gone straight to the famous autobiography of the great Italian Rennaissance sculptor. Welles was a big fan of opera, but the guess here is that it would have been based on the autobiography.

In any event, here's hoping Gilliam's production becomes available to see somehow, and that his Quixote film has better luck getting off the ground this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5dm5OBuk6c

[Wellesnet]

Gilliam's entire production is now online:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... i-20150622