Sky Arts and the English National Opera recently launched Sky Arts Opera Shorts, a unique collaboration with leading figures from the visual arts. This particular film by Dougal Wilson is a rendition of Largo al Factotum (here at your service to do or die) from The Barber Of Seville with a dash of stop-motion hair monster. This genre seems a perfect match for Dougal’s vaudevillian sense of theatrics and mastery of quirk.
Dougal says, “I’ve always wanted to try making a music video for a piece of classical music. Classical and opera music don’t have the same structure that most pop songs have – it’s usually more of a story, with twists and turns, and changing tempo. It invites an idea which is like a story, but also has to work with sound, which I thought would be really fun to try.”
In addition to Dougal, Werneg Herzog and Sam Taylor-Wood have also contributed pieces for this project.