The talented Marie í Dali

After all of last week's fashion talk I think it's time to return to some geeky topics – after all I am Nerd Girl.

Therefore to night I'll attack something different that's also very dear to me: theatre and stage and costume design. I guess in some sense you could argue a connection to the world of fashion. I love going to almost all sorts of stage performances. Last week I saw ‘Maskarade’ by Danish composer Carl Nielsen at the Royal Opera House.
The story of ‘Maskarade’ stupid – so I’ll only bore you with the basics: a lot of love complications, an evil patriarch and a happy ending at a large masquerade ball. The singing and music was great, the direction was witty and gave a good new life to this old banal piece of drama. What I really want to tell you about is the stage design: It was made by one of Denmarks most interesting stage and costume designers Marie í Dali. She has been working mostly with opera, and I’ve seen only 4 of her productions, yet every one has made such an impression on me that I’ve often ended up remembering more about the set designs than the actual play or opera.

She has worked quite a lot with stage director and the creative director of the Royal Opera Kasper Bech Holten who has also directed ‘Maskarade’. The set design here was modern and funny with such an intelligent use of props (the playboy-bunny towls and all the skincare products) to create a lifestyle image. Í Dali's use of room and perspective are also In the bedroom for example í Dali had tiled the perspective:

I also really enjoyed í Dali’s work in Holten’s direction of The Ring Cycle by Wagner, where she worked together with Steffen Aarfing. I’m not really a Wagner-fan, the music is too heavy for me and I tend to get bored. But from The Copenhagen Ring Cycle I only saw ‘Das Walkyrie’, and I was blown away - it was not boring at all but so heartfelt and moving. The mood in the songs was so beautifully reflected in the different sets:

The valkyries with their black wings and party dresses were so refined and scary at the same time:So far I've only seen Marie Í Dali's work on stage, but I've read that she's also done some Danish films which I look forward to seeing. Actually, in the future I just might start choosing my plays and operas by their stage designer instead of by director or composer.