Entertainment Design: Taking a gamble: Tsypin and Ingalls at the Met

Russian emigre designer George Tsypin made his debut at The Metropolitan Opera this season, fittingly enough, with Prokofiev's The Gambler: Tsypin took a few gambles of his own, designing a set that is quite abstract and surreal. Set in Roulettenberg, a fictitious spa in Central Europe circa 1865, The Gambler is the tale of one man's obsession with gambling, and is based on Dostoyevsky's novella by the same name. "This is a modest work, a small intimate opera. One has to realize that by the Met's standards, this is a small production, but this opera doesn't need more than that," notes Tsypin. "The sets have a toy-like quality, almost like a world that goes upside down."

The action begins in a tall, little room downstage that represents the small world where Alexei, the gambler, lives. "The room opens up into a dreamlike space in his memory, and imagination," explains Tsypin. "It becomes distorted and unreal, with the tops of spires cut off by the ceiling, and a garden without branches or leaves." The downstage room serves as a scenic device, allowing other sets to be changed behind it and assure fluid movement from one scene to the next. There is quite a bit of movement in the sets, as the units revolve on a turntable, and the ceiling moves up and down and revolves at the same time.

A throughline in Tsypin's designs is a circular shape, an echo of the ever-present roulette wheel, which represents hopes and lost dreams. A series of pillars, or columns laced with red and green neon, shape the space, and continually move. "It's as if they keep revolving as the world revolves," he notes. A giant roulette wheel turns overhead, as the gambling obsession crushes the characters.

Tsypin also used the imagery of horses in the set design, as if to represent another betting obsession, as well as a park-like setting. "First there is a normal image of a horse in the garden," he says. "But then in a flash of blinding light, the horse flies away, in another strange, dreamlike image."

The color palette includes green, to represent both money and a park-like setting, as well as red, for the red of the roulette wheel. These colors are emphasized by James F. Ingalls' lighting. "The goal was to contrast Alexei's real life and his dreams," says Ingalls. "It's like moving from black and white to Technicolor. Everything is pushed a little; even the daylight is an acidy yellow."

Ingalls made a conscious effort to use large 4kW and 6kW HMI sources on strong diagonals and in concentric circles to echo the set. As the gambling frenzy mounts, the color increases to the poisonous tones of the gaming tables. "The scene really explodes along with the music," notes Ingalls.

"The music is so unusual, with classical melodies cut off," he adds. "The sets and lighting respond to that." Tsypin and Ingalls will return to the Met next year, with another Russian opera, Prokofiev's War and Peace, which comes to New York by way of the Kirov in St. Petersburg, Covent Garden in London, and La Scala in Milan.