Picasso as an opera

While Picasso did do set & costume designs for Ballet,  I haven't found that he wrote any operas, nor are there any operas written about him.  Though in 1996, Steve Martin did write a play about Picasso & Einstein (John had to remind me that we had seen Picasso At The Lapin Agile, a number of years ago!)  The show's premise was, "What If Picasso & Einstein had met?"  A book written earlier in 2001, Einstein, Picasso-Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc,  acknowledges that,  "Although the physicist and painter never met, their creative geniuses developed simultaneously under similar social circumstances and during an unrivaled period of cultural ferment."   This topic is certainly worthy of a scene....

And Antony Penrose recently wrote a book, The Boy Who Bit Picasso (2011),  which I want to get.  It speaks to Picasso's human qualities we were talking about.

Filled with his mother's photographs and Picasso's artwork, it is a gem. It is called The Boy Who Bit Picasso – an unusual boast, but Tony is that boy and Picasso bit back. He exclaimed: "Pensez! C'est le premier anglais que j'ai jamais mordu!" ("It is the first Englishman I have ever bitten.") But it was not to be the end of their friendship. Far from it: Tony was "bitten" by Picasso in every sense.

It defintely sounds like it has Broadway play potential!  More at   http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/aug/22/picasso-lee-miller-tony-penrose

 I also came upon this article about an exhibition of his work from the collection of his last wife & love of his life, Jacqueline Roque -- definitely an opera scene there!  Despite their 43 year age difference, they definitely had a strong connection. 

But this is not simply a show of portraits of Jacqueline. Over the years, Picasso presented his wife with paintings and drawings from every period of his career, beginning with a self-portrait of 1906. There are magnificent 1907 charcoal studies for the mask-like heads in the Demoiselles d'Avignon. His gift of an exquisitely refined 1917 neoclassical self-portrait seems to say, "Here, you see how handsome I once was." For Picasso's gifts to Jacqueline appear to be a kind of visual biography he shared with the last love of his life......When Picasso told the story of his life to Jacqueline, it was not in words, but in images.....What we see in this show is like a series of love letters - intense, emotional, private, revealing...... it documents one of the saddest love stories of the 20th century.

That would be an interesting catalogue to have.

She committed suicide 10 years after his death & is buried besides him.  Kleenex, please!  Will I need to borrow Grace to play Jacqueline, too?   Oh no, typecasting already!

To read more,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3610082/Picassos-saddest-love.html