Stage Design: "La Boheme" edition project for Franco Colavecchia

One of the reasons I've been excited for Franco's show here in San Diego is that it coincides nicely with the development of my Artist Services' project at The Frame Maker, specifically the fine art reproduction capabilities of the project provided through our partner Moebius Color.

As a student of stage design, I love Franco's stage design rendering work for its accuracy to the stage experience. I don't mean realism, but a painterly immediacy that transports you directly into the theatre audience; they are after all, stage design renderings, even though I admire them primarily as paintings, and their true function is to talk about a production of the design on a real stage with real people in real time.

That said, I find the timeless quality inherent in great paintings in Franco's best stage rendering work, yet, for a variety of reasons, much of it is unavailable to be seen or shown in the original ever again. This is where the Artist Services' project comes in.

Working together with Raber Umphenour of MOSDO, the Museum of Stage Design Online, San Diego Artist Services is proud introduce the first of a series of small fine art editions reprinting selected images from over 30 years of Franco's stage design rendering for theatre and opera.

In 1982, while living in New York City, Franco's designed the sets for Philadelphia Opera's "La Boheme" featuring Luciano Pavarotti. This production went on to tour Italy, and the subsequent PBS production won a series of Emmy awards.

This set of six different scenes and design concepts from La Boheme have been scanned from the original slides shot to document the work at the time and are printed in the original monochrome palette at full size, approximately 20" x 14" on heavy archival paper with UV resistant inks.

Here's a screen version of the second rendering of the six:



The first complete sets of six will be reviewed by Franco this week during his annual teaching visit to San Diego and presented as signed artist's proofs in his show "Franco Colavecchia: SoHo Memory Paintings", opening reception this Thursday June 4 in The Frame Maker showroom.

This is the first west coast show of Franco's work and the first appearance of any kind of reproduction of Franco's work anywhere, so if you live in southern California and are interested in theater stage design, come check this show out and meet Franco at a rare San Diego event on Thursday night!