An Introduction to Michael Levine's Sketchbook Drawings for the Toronto Ring
Helmut Reichenbächer · The Opera Quarterly · 2008
Michael Levine's designs for the Toronto Ring create strong images that link all four parts of the Ring together through recurring visual details. Spanning a century of styles, the production creates three distinct metaphorical spaces that indicate important stages of the drama's development: These visual elements illustrate the motifs of innocence, corruption, betrayal, and sheer lust for power from the Victorian period to the contemporary world. ... An established theater designer, Toronto native Michael Levine has collaborated with such renowned stage directors as Robert Lepage, Daniel Brooks, and Robert Carsen. Having gained a degree in theater design from Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design in London, Levine began his career in the 1980s as a resident designer at the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre. He added operatic stage designs to his oeuvre a few years later. He frequently collaborates with opera director Robert Carsen (for instance, Les Contes d'Hoffman and Nabucco in Paris, Die Frau ohne Schatten in Vienna, and Eugene Onegin at the Met), but has also designed for the Netherlands Opera and the English National Opera (ENO).