I attended a dress rehearsal of the Minnesota Opera's production of
Werther. It was open to a small group of comic artist to sketch the opera as it happened. This required a sketch pad, a clip-on reading light and trying to draw moving figures on a stage about 50 yards away. The remarkable thing is that I never ever attended a opera. I've avoided them because of the singing always seemed too loud, too dramatic and too long. But generalizing anything is a bad idea so I gave it a go. This French Opera was quite good. Great voices and music. Lively direction and a fascinating set design. The direction was so lively it was difficult to draw any pose. The actors were in near constant motion making loose gestural sketches the only option.
Below are several pages from my sketchbook. I tried coloring some of them after the fact but I think they are best left as they are. The first act I drew in pencil, which coincidentally fit the light and breezy storytelling. The second and final act I used a increasingly blunter marker nib pen, which also related well with the story's darker tragic half.
Most of the written words with the drawings are quotes from the translated lyrics.
Some sketches were more successful than others. And I wish I'd figured a way to add Batman into my drawings like my fellow sketcher, Tom Boguszewski, did. Well, there's always next time.
