TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Robert Wilson, avant-garde theatre legend: 'France gave me a home'
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
US theater director and visual artist Robert 'Bob' Wilson poses during a photo session in Paris on September 1, 2021. (AFP/Joel Saget)
T
heatre director Robert Wilson helped transform the way opera is seen around the world, but as he turns 80, it is still Europe that comes calling, while he remains largely ignored back home in the US.
From a seven-hour "silent opera" and productions of Verdi and Puccini influenced by Japanese "Noh" theatre, to collaborations with songwriters Tom Waits and Lady Gaga, Wilson has spent half a century perfecting a instantly recognisable style.
Practically from the start, the multi-faceted artist, who was born in Waco, Texas on October 4, 1941, felt more drawn to Europe -- and particularly France -- than to his native United States, where he struggled to be appreciated.
"What is remarkable with the French, in the 20th century, they gave a home to Braque, to Picasso, to Stravinsky, to Peter Brook, to myself," Bob Wilson told AFP in an interview in Paris.
"The French have given me a home. I have four events happening around my 80th birthday in France and not one in the United States."
They include Puccini's "Turandot" at Opera Bastille, an adaptation of "The Jungle Book" at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris; and two projects with choreographer Lucinda Childs at the Theatre de la Ville.
Wilson has long been feted in the French capital and was even entrusted with the honour of staging the inauguration of the new Opera Bastille in 1989.
