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An obvious starting point for Pulitzer and her team was Egypt. For the costumes, Hoffman said she was inspired by the play\u2019s description of Cleopatra as a kind of goddess, with elements of Isis as represented in ancient art, while drawing freely from Ancient Egyptian representations of deities and royalty.<\/p>\n
A large architectural feature that Lien created for the \u201cAntony and Cleopatra\u201d set was based on the vaulted ceiling inside the Red Pyramid. Its gentle steps were translated into a steeply angled wall that at first appears to be monolithic but later divides into pieces that move throughout the opera, sometimes coming back together and breaking apart again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThese two pillars are huge, almost like the child\u2019s version of Egypt and Rome,\u201d Lien said. \u201cIn some sense they\u2019re two sides of the coin, polar opposites in a way, and I wanted them to convey the gravitas of these two civilizations and the weight that they carry throughout history and in our consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thinking about Egypt also led the designers to 20th-century Egyptomania, which followed the discovery of Tutankhamen\u2019s tomb and wormed its way into pop culture and 1930s Hollywood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Perhaps the most famous, or at least the most lavish, movie depiction of Cleopatra was by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1960s. As an actress who was uncomfortably familiar with how she was seen by the public, Taylor was certainly an inspiration for Pulitzer\u2019s staging. But another film version also informed the team: Cecil B. DeMille\u2019s 1934 \u201cCleopatra,\u201d starring Claudette Colbert.<\/p>\n
That movie\u2019s Cleopatra, whose slinky glamour wouldn\u2019t be out of place among off-duty Hollywood actors at the time, reminded Hoffman of an Art Deco-meets-Egypt house that the art director Cedric Gibbons had built for himself and his wife Dolores del R\u00edo. Gary Cooper was draped in a zebra hide for a pool party there, a look that informed Hoffman\u2019s designs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cGary Cooper was kind of posing as Hercules, playing around,\u201d she said. \u201cBut that\u2019s very much what Antony\u2019s doing while he lives in Egypt, right?\u201d (Included in Antony\u2019s costuming for his Egypt scenes is a piece based on a tunic found in Tutankhamen\u2019s tomb.)<\/p>\n
A bit of Lien\u2019s set design draws on the mesmerizingly kaleidoscopic movie musicals of Busby Berkeley, like \u201cDames,\u201d released in 1934, the same year as DeMille\u2019s \u201cCleopatra.\u201d There are even dancers in the opera who surround Cleopatra, in choreography by Annie-B Parson.<\/p>\n
Cleopatra must appear like a celebrity: effortlessly seductive but also a bit jaded while surrounded by Hollywood comforts. \u201cShe may look like a goddess,\u201d Hoffman said, \u201cyet she\u2019s just a woman with a hangover.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A celebrity wouldn\u2019t be a celebrity without a carefully crafted public image, an idea that is hinted at through props like a spotlight that shines on Cleopatra as she lounges by the pool. She isn\u2019t the only character to get this treatment, which also appears in propagandistic videos, hordes of paparazzi and publicity stunts throughout the opera. The performance is even framed like a Hollywood premiere, with the Met\u2019s golden curtain, which is barely used in modern productions, down at the start to make the theater look like an old movie palace.<\/p>\n
Cleopatra\u2019s scene by the pool, Pulitzer said, is a \u201ca kind of \u2018Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous\u2019 moment.\u201d But it\u2019s also a way for this celebrity figure to control how she is seen, combining the style and independence of someone like Josephine Baker for a feminist statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cFemale actresses in the 1930s didn\u2019t have a lot of agency because of the Hollywood system,\u201d Pulitzer said, adding of Cleopatra: \u201cSo it was important that she be in control of the lens and not just some object being gazed at.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n