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The Devil is in the Detail

Peter Friedman • 1h 54m

Directed by Peter Friedman • Documentary • With Robert Carsen, Lambert Wilson, Anna Christy • 2021 • 114 minutes

A feature-length cinema vérité portrait of one of the world's greatest stage directors at work, filmed over the course of a year. From his first sketches in pencil until opening night, we witness Carsen's creative processes as he reinvents Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE, which Bernstein and writer Lillian Hellman based on the classic 18th century book by Voltaire, in order to satirize Senator McCarthy and his anti-Communist witch-hunts. Carsen's name is not well known to the general public, but it's a household word among the heads of every theater, museum, and opera house in Europe and the US. While his primary focus is bringing an audacious, contemporary visual style to classical operas, his wide-ranging work includes “Karl For Ever”, a 2019 tribute to Karl Lagerfeld for the Grand Palais in Paris, and a cowboy show for Disneyland Paris which has been running for 25 years. 

Tags
20th century american history, anna christy, art and architecture, candide, choreography, comic operetta, costume design, critical thinking and ethics, dance, doc, documentary, drama, drama and theater, expository, history, lambert wilson, leonard bernstein, mccarthy hearings, music, musical comedy, musical theater, opera, ovid, performing arts, philosophers, philosophy, robert carsen, set design, strange attractions, the 1950s and the cold war, the devil is in the detail, theater, u.s. history, voltaire, william burden

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