Smithsonian Associates: Art Meets Music – A Duet of Visual Artists and Composers, Lecture 1 – Chagall at the Opera: A Listener’s Guide

Music and the visual arts have always walked hand in hand. For millennia, artists have obsessed about how to represent music’s invisible beauty, just as composers have sought to render art’s vibrant colors in pure sound.

Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin leads a fascinating exploration into the intimate relationship between the visible and invisible arts and how music can literally bind the arts together.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

Marc Chagall said “I wanted to represent, as in a mirror, a bunch of dreams, the creations of the actors and musicians; to keep in mind the colorful clothes of the audience stirring on the lower level. To sing like a bird, free of any theory and method. To render homage to the great composers of operas and ballets.” From the Paris Opéra Garnier to New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Chagall created utterly unique murals, sets, and costumes for opera houses and theaters worldwide that changed theatrical design forever. Franklin surveys the many composers he glorified and discusses how they inspired him.