MONTREAL - A painted curtain created by Salvador Dali and not seen in public since 1944 will serve as the backdrop for a theatrical event about the artist?s life, to be staged at Place des Arts in January.
Free passes to view the huge canvas ? eight by 15 metres ? on Wednesday, Nov. 7?in Th??tre Maisonneuve are available at the Place des Arts box office.
The play, La Verit?, will have its world premiere here on Jan. 17. It was written and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca for 12 of the acrobat-actor-musician-clowns of his eponymous Swiss-based circus company. Some members of his troupe are Montrealers, including co-founder Julie Hamelin, who was also a co-founder of Cirque ?loize.
Finzi Pasca said Monday that Dali?s painting was purchased by a collector, restored in Switzerland and offered for his use.
Jennifer Whisper, an art historian working with Compagnia Finzi Pasca, said Dali painted the backdrop for a New York production of Mad Tristan, a ballet inspired by Wagner?s opera about the ill-fated lovers Tristan and Isolde.
The canvas depicts the tragic end of the story, Whisper said. Tristan, believing that Isolde has left him, kills himself. Isolde returns, finds him dead, and also ends her life.
Dali, being the Surrealist he was, illustrated the death scene of what he called ?the first paranoiac ballet? in strange imagery that Whisper interpreted at a preview Monday.
Just which of the two figures is Tristan and which is Isolde? It would seem that the figure on the left is Tristan, with its prominent Adam?s apple and flat chest.
No, Whisper said. Both figures have Adam?s apples, and although the figure on the right has delicate hands and long tresses, that is Tristan. He has no shadow, indicating he is already dead. His head is wrapped in cloth and the wheelbarrow growing out of his shoulder signifies the soil used to bury him.
Isolde, the figure on the left, still has her shadow, but blood is dripping from her chest onto the ground.
The egg in the foreground and the ants emerging from cracks in Isolde?s body are Surrealist motifs that Dali often used.
All is not gloomy: the lovers? hands reach for each other, a hope for life that the dancers took up in 1944, Whisper said. Now, almost 70 years later, the Finzi Pasca dancers will again bring the canvas to life.
For more information, visit bit.ly/REHRmq. To reserve free passes to see Dali?s canvas on one of three tours on Wednesday, Nov. 7?? noon, 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. ? visit pda.qc.ca.
john.o.pohl@gmail.com
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