Donizetti Opera in 3D film at City Screen, York (From York Press)

Lucrezia Borgia in 3D, City Screen, York, September 13

11:02am Friday 9th September 2011 in Film reviews

On Tuesday night, City Screen, York, will show Gaetano Donizetti’s seldom-staged opera Lucrezia Borgia in 3D at 8.15pm.

In February, this English National Opera production was the subject of the world’s first live 3D opera broadcast from the London Coliseum.

Donizetti’s opera was directed by Mike Figgis, the north-eastern filmmaker and artist best known for the Oscar-winning Leaving Las Vegas, who made his operatic debut with this production.

Lucrezia Borgia follows the complex relationship between a mother and her illegitimate son, exploring the brutal nature of Machiavellian politics and the struggle for power: subject matter that has earned Tuesday’s recorded version an advisory 18 certificate.

Lucrezia Borgia’s life was complicated and shrouded in mystery, lending itself to cinematic ideas such as flashbacks and parallel time frames (a concept first explored by Figgis in his film Timecode in 2000). Consequently, Figgis has created vignettes filmed on location in Italy, weaving them into his production to explore the earlier life of Renaissance Italy’s darkest femme fatale.

Paul Daniel conducts a stellar cast that includes Claire Rutter as Lucrezia Borgia, Michael Fabiano as Gennaro and British bass Alastair Miles as Alfonso d’Este.

• Tickets for Lucrezia Borgia (18) can be booked on 0871 902 5726 or online at picturehouses.co.uk