Recently, I saw the ENO’s production of Madame Butterfly. The staging was exceptional, with use of lighting behind the stage to provide breathtaking silhouettes.
The silhouetted style reminded me of Lotte Reiniger’s paper cut animations, and really highlighted the visual significance of achieving a clear silhouette in animated storytelling. It would be interesting to try to recreate the ‘cut-out’ silhouette style imagery in 2D, which can arguably achieve smoother movement.
The production itself included elements beyond silhouette that can be associated with animation style such as puppetry. Opera has been animated before (E.g. Batchelor’s Ruddigore), but it would be interesting to see what could be achieved when trying to animate opera in a less traditionally ‘cartoonish’ style.
See below for an image of Madame Butterfly’s opening scene from the ENO website.
