Collection of images from 43 opera and theatre performances staged by Alvis Hermanis both in Latvia and abroad. However this does not aspire to be a comprehensive overview of the creative output of Alvis Hermanis. The pictures have been selected from the most visually interesting productions.
“Already long ago we had started up a conversation about the possibility of a publication such as this with theatre critic Normunds Naumanis, who in the earliest years was the first to appreciate Alvis Hermanis’ achievements in the theatre and continued to be a keen reviewer of his productions. Unfortunately fate had decreed otherwise. The fragments from Naumanis’ reviews for this collection of images were carefully selected by Sarmīte Ēlerte – his friend and colleague at the newspaper Diena. As a long-term follower and fan of Alvis Hermanis’ theatrical events, and possibly the only person who has seen all of the productions that Hermanis has staged abroad, Ēlerte was also invited to conduct an interview with Alvis Hermanis. The director himself agreed to write a short commentary on each of his productions. But the introductory essay was written by the erudite theatre historian and critic Edīte Tišheizere. The design of the album was conceived and carried out with great commitment and thoroughness by the artist Inese Hofmane." (Laima Slava)
My greatest conviction is that every story is in its own way a model of the world per se. Every opera, every play, every poem exists as a model of the world in miniature. Latvians have a saying: the sun in a drop of dew. This tiny dewdrop with its spherical shape reflects the entire cosmos. I regard each story told in the language of the theatre in a similar way. Each individual work is embedded in a certain anthropological context, with all the consequences that follow from that, also at the aesthetic level, as regards style, the visualisation. Because for me visualisation is always the beginning of the beginning. Until I begin to see pictures of how the production could look, the process simply cannot take place.
Alvis Hermanis
