#1
Posted: 11/2/05 at 8:24am
I attended a preview of LESTAT yesterday and have to say that I think this show is going to be pretty incredible. The entire cast and creative team were on hand to talk about the process of creating the show and sang five songs from throughout, including a very haunting song that will be the shows finale.
The set designer showed sketches from what the set will look like and it looks gorgeous. It uses a lot of photographs projected on the set in order to let the audience travel over 200 years with the characters and not have to make elaborate set changes. Not like what WOMAN IN WHITE is doing at all, this is very new and different. We were told the stage would be surrounded by what will look like "crumpled red construction paper" coming out (I believe) 13 feet into the audience, so that we will be taken completely into this world.
I also found out (which I didn't know) that Act 1 will be based on the book LESTAT and Act 2 will be based on INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. This makes sense since we start the show with Lestat as a human and follow his journey, from unwillingly becoming a vampire all the way to the end of INTERVIEW.
Miss Carmello and the rest of the cast including Hugh Panaro and Jack Noseworthy were in great voice. This was the first time they had ever performed any of these songs in public, and they still had the music in front of them but they all sounded glorious. Elton John and Bernie Taupin said the score is very operatic and you could certanly tell that from the sampling we got yesterday. Elton did say that this score took him longer to write than anything he'd ever done before - 11 days. But he did say he considers it to be the finest music he and Bernie have ever collaborated on. And considering the music these two have put out in the past 30+ years, that's really saying something.
The set designer showed sketches from what the set will look like and it looks gorgeous. It uses a lot of photographs projected on the set in order to let the audience travel over 200 years with the characters and not have to make elaborate set changes. Not like what WOMAN IN WHITE is doing at all, this is very new and different. We were told the stage would be surrounded by what will look like "crumpled red construction paper" coming out (I believe) 13 feet into the audience, so that we will be taken completely into this world.
I also found out (which I didn't know) that Act 1 will be based on the book LESTAT and Act 2 will be based on INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. This makes sense since we start the show with Lestat as a human and follow his journey, from unwillingly becoming a vampire all the way to the end of INTERVIEW.
Miss Carmello and the rest of the cast including Hugh Panaro and Jack Noseworthy were in great voice. This was the first time they had ever performed any of these songs in public, and they still had the music in front of them but they all sounded glorious. Elton John and Bernie Taupin said the score is very operatic and you could certanly tell that from the sampling we got yesterday. Elton did say that this score took him longer to write than anything he'd ever done before - 11 days. But he did say he considers it to be the finest music he and Bernie have ever collaborated on. And considering the music these two have put out in the past 30+ years, that's really saying something.
