Hubble provides the cosmic background to a dark French opera
Grandiose space images from NASA's Hubble telescope might be the last thing you'd expect see in an early 20th century French opera. However, Marco Brambilla, the artist behind epic video art installations and Kanye West's "moving painting" music video for Power , has done just that. He created the video backdrop for a new production of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande , currently running at the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in Antwerp, Belgium. Pelléas et Mélisande , based on the "libretto" play by Maurice Maeterlinck, is Debussy's only opera and regarded as one of the greatest ever. The story depicts Prince Golaud, who discovers the mysterious Melisandé lost in forest, setting up a love triangle with Golaud's half-brother. The set design by Marina Abramović features a giant, crystal-covered convex mirror that merges into the floor and act like an eye with Brambilla's video backdrop as the "iris" at the center. Brambilla u...