DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER | Page 74

OTELLO 1887, 2015 The work takes as point of departure Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello which in turn takes its plot from William Shakespeare’s 1603/4 tragedy by the same name. Filmed in the gardens of the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid on occasion of the artist‘s solo exhibition entitled Splendide Hotel, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Otello begins with what appears to be a nighttime view of the structure. Reminiscent of the famous 1851 Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton in London, it was built in 1887, the same year Verdi’s opera premiered in Milaris La Scala. The film can be seen in reference to Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s larger project M.2062, which is, in the artist’s words, a prospective and fragmented opera that incorporates “not only literature, movies and music but also quotations, adaptations, juxtapositions, games, and identities. It is an opera with author-characters such as Emily Brontë and Edgar Allen Poe, fictional characters drawn from movies and novels, and also real people who inspired extraordinary films that feature opera.” But in contrast to the artist’s apparition works that are enacted by the artist herself, the beautifully shot film uses the constructed environment for a staging of parts of Verdi’s opera with other actors. Otello 1887, 2015 HD video (color, sound) 25:31 min (DGF 237) Film still 74