The visual approach of Pyotr Pospelov’s one-act opera Night at the Museum or the Testament of the Master received the elements of kinetic sculptures and compositions of Jean Tinguely, the Swiss artist of the 20th century.

“The story of the new production of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre takes place in the museum, and this is a major boon to an artist”, says the set designer of the show Alla Shelimova.

“The show will be presented at the art space loft Quadrat; its layout is quite unusual and gives full scope to spectators’ imagination. The task was to create a mysterious museum, so it was necessary to make not just stage set but to saturate this museum with weird, nearly unreal objects the way each object transformed the stage. I thought of the kinetic sculptures and art objects of the artist and sculptor Jean Tinguely as the elements for the visual approach of the performance. As a result, the space of our museum is filled with incomprehensible devices and objects, sculptures, weird watches, bicycles, physical exercises machines that are constantly involved into the performance: they change their position, configuration, lighting. Thus, the effect of mystery and magic is created”, explains Alla Shelimova.

Jean Tinguely is a Swiss kinetic artist, creator of numerous self-moving and self-disintegrating mechanisms assembled from all kinds of industrial scrap. In 1959, he unveiled a manifesto of kinetic art; he threw tens of thousands of its copies from a plane over Düsseldorf. The manifesto said: “Everything is in motion, stillstand doesn’t exist. Don’t let the obsolete time concepts take hold of you. Down with hours, seconds and minutes. Do not resist volatility.”

The premiere of the chamber opera Night at the Museum or the Testament of the Master (based on Mozart’s sonatas) will take place on February 14 and 16 in the art space loft Quadrat (Krasnoy Armiyi Street, 10, building 4).