Idéale audience
The Perfect American
The last days of the American icon Walt Disney form a powerful and poignant subject for Philip Glass’s latest opera, which was filmed at its first performances in Madrid in January 2013. Phelim McDermott’s spectacular production is worthly of Disney’s own visual imagination and its definitive influence on American culture, while in the pit is the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, an experienced and authoritative champion of the composer’s hynoptically beautiful music, which gives wings to Rudy Wurlitzer’s operatic transformation of Peter Stephan Jungk’s novel, using both fact and fiction to peer into Disney’s troubled psyche as illness forces him to confront his mortality.
Scriptwriter :
Rudy Wurlitzer
Director :
Janos Darvas
Producer :
Co-production : Idéale Audience, EuroArts, WDR/Arte, NHK, TVE
With the participation of : France Télévisions & Museec/medici.tv,
Produced by Françoise Gazio & Isabel Iturriagagoitia Bueno
Running time :
1h50
Format :
HDCAM
Year of production :
2013
Distributor(s) / Sales Agent(s) :
EuroArts Music International
DVD : Opus Arte
Composer(s) :
Philip Glass
Work(s) :
The Perfect American
Libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer
From the novel „ The Perfect American „ by Peter Stephan Jungk
Cast :
Solists
Christopher Purves (Walt Disney)
David Pittsinger (Roy)
Donald Kaasch (Dantine)
Janis Kelly (Hazel George)
Marie McLauglin (Lillian Disney)
Sarah Tynan (Sharon)
John Easterlin (Andy Warhol)
Juan Noval-Moro (Chuck),
Noelia Buñuel (Nurse)
David Pittsinger (Roy)
Nazan Fricket (Lucy)
Dennis Russell Davies, musical director
The Improbable Skills Ensemble
Coro y Orquesta Titulares del Teatro Real
(Coro Intermezzo y Orquesta Sinfonica de Madrid)
Phelim Mc Dermott, Stage director
Date and shoot location :
Filmed at Teatro Real de Madrid
January/ February 2013
Photo credits :
©Javier Del Real