Postcard from Juditha Triumphans Project Content Designer and Scenic Designer Peter Crompton

In SFGC’s Postcard series, our guest artists, collaborators, and faculty take us behind the scenes and share an intimate look into their thoughts about music, life, and art-making.

This postcard features Peter Crompton, Project Content Designer and Scenic Designer of SFGC Presents: Juditha Triumphans.

Peter Crompton is a set and projection designer. He has won SF Bay Area Critic's Choice, Shellies, and Goodman Choice awards. He has also designed for Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, Yucatan Symphony, Opera San José, Santa Barbara Opera, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Music of Remembrance, Marin Theater Company, MFDP, Revels, SSMT, Western Ballet, Jarvis Conservatory, SSU, and SRJC, among others. 

Recent productions include "Flying Dutchman" for West Bay opera, and "By George" for Lamplighters. He teaches design at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University.

Peter also makes momumental sculpture with his wife Robyn. Their installations can be seen in downtown Cotati, Paradise Ridge, Cloverdale, Geyserville, and at Hammerfriar gallery in Healdsburg. Their garden is open every September for ARTrails.

Peter Crompton, Project Content Designer and Scenic Designer

What is your general approach to creating projections and set designs? How has this production affected your approach?
I do a lot of research! In this case, the set for Juditha is very simple, and most of the heavy lifting is done by the projections. We are using five or six different projectors simultaneously to create an all-encompassing, enveloping environment for the audience. This is a lot more than I usually use, which is two or three. As theater practitioners our job is to tell the story, so by incorporating all these different images through projection we can tell the story in a much more interesting and engaging way than simply doing a realistic background for an opera. If you want realism you should just go to a movie! If you’re going to go to a show like this, the audience is there to see the singers and be enlightened and enlivened, and not necessarily to be completely sucked into verisimilitude like you would with seeing some big blockbuster spectacle. Having all these different parts - for example, maps of Venice, venetian paintings, paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi, Vivaldi’s score - helps to make a much richer experience than you might otherwise have.

Vivaldi’s Score

What is it like collaborating with Celine Ricci, the stage director for this production? How did her vision inform your approach to this work?
In this production of Juditha Triumphans, [stage director Céline Ricci] has chosen to set it in multiple time periods. The conceit of this production is that Vivaldi has sent a gift of this oratorio to the San Francisco Girls Chorus from the 17th Century via a package with props and a score. The singers open it and perform it based on the contents of the package. Because of this interesting conceptual statement, there’s the layer of the contemporary girls chorus, there’s the layer of biblical times when the story of Judith and Holofernes takes place, and then there’s the story centering around the Italian renaissance in Venice - in particular, the battles Venice was having with the Ottomans. I have selected images that evoke all three time periods.

Assyrian soldiers

Ottoman tent

What should the audience look for in your work? How have the three time periods been represented? Any historical context we should consider?
For the contemporary elements, I’ve used images from the exterior and interior of the Kanbar Center where the Girls Chorus rehearses. A lot of the images are from Vivaldi’s Venice. At the time Vivaldi wrote this, Venice was having a war with the Ottoman empire, in particular over Corfu the island (this opera was written as a celebration of Venetian naval victory in Corfu). I've got drawings and maps from Venice that I’m using as part of the projections, and maps and drawings of Corfu that appear. And because I enjoy the music so much, the score is actually part of the projections as well! If you look at the set, the platforms are painted with Vivalidi’s music, and Vivaldi’s music also scrolls upstage of the action in some cases. 

Map of Corfu

The other touchstone in the projections is the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi, who is a famous Renaissance painter. In particular she’s famous for her painting of Judith beheading Holofernes, which is quite graphic for the time. Part of her coming into her own as a painter wass being able to stand up to the male dominated society that she lived in. There were very few women painters back then, and she painted women and their struggles with a sensitivity that you don’t find in her predecessors who painted similar subjects. What in particular interests me and Céline is her approach to painting strong biblical heroines, so we’re using a lot of her paintings, and some paintings from other venetian artists, as stand-ins for the characters. 

Judith Beheading Holoferens, Artemisia Gentileschi

You’ll see there’ll be giant versions of Artemisian heroes as part of the initial set-up for the opera. So for example, when we’re dealing with the Assyrian general’s camp, I’m overlaying some of those Assyrian images and infantry/soldiers with Ottoman soldiers. When we’re doing the tent of Holofernes (the Assyrian general that Judith defeats), we are looking at images of biblical style tents, but also these really fantastical regal ottoman tents that have incredibly beautiful complex fabric design in them. We’re also looking at famous venetian paintings like The Feast in the House of Levi by Paolo Veronese, so you put all that stuff in a blender and mix it up, and come up with what I think will be a really graphically interesting presentation that helps tell the story not only from the point of view of the biblical heroine, but also from a venetian point of view, and from the point of view of the Girls Chorus in contemporary times.

Projection image featuring a map of Venice

What inspires you about working with SFGC?
I've worked with the Girls Chorus on a number of shows, and really the beauty of the music and their voices is what does it for me. I had this moment where I was sitting with my collaborator [Projection Systems Engineer] Frédéric Boulay during a break time, and we were just sitting and talking about specifics of projectors and boring things, and right next to us these two singers just started practicing their parts, and it was so beautiful! What other situation are you in where you can just be talking about quotidian things and then suddenly this amazing music starts flowing over you? That’s something I particularly enjoyed. 

Rendering of the projections in Z Space

What advice can you give to our singers that you wish you had received when you were their age?
I deal mostly with design students, rather than singers, but my advice for design students is never to turn down a show. You are known in the arts not necessarily by where you went, but by what you’ve done. The shows you’ve been in are the most important part of your experience and resume. The more experience you have working on shows, the better you’re living that life successfully. 

What do you have coming up? Give us a sneak peek!
I have a new opera by Jake Heggie called Before It All Goes Dark with the company Music of Remembrance, which is premiering in Seattle and then coming down to San Francisco in May! I think working with Heggie is kind of like working with Verdi would have been. He’s a modern master.

SFGC Presents: Juditha Triumphans will take place at Z Space on March 9th and 10th, 2024.