Conor Murphy
Opera designs include Alceste (Lisbon), Tristan und Isolde (Hannover), Elektra (Gothenburg), Orphée et Eurydice (Royal Opera House and La Scala, Milan), Lohengrin (Sweden), La clemenza di Tito (Opera North), La Bohème (Holland),The Magic Flute (Korean National Opera), Salome (Montpellier), Powder Her Face (Royal Opera House).
Designs for theatre include The Government Inspector, Arturo Ui and The Crucible (Abbey, Dublin); The Birthday Party and Juno & the Paycock (Bristol Old Vic), Richard III (Leeds) and Ice Road (Bristol).
Dance designs include Labyrinth of Love and Tomorrow (Rambert), The Four Seasons (Birmingham Royal Ballet) and Giselle Reloaded (Donlon Dance company).
At WSD2013 in Cardiff he was awarded bronze for ‘exceptional achievement across all categories’. At WSD2017 in Taipei his designs for Orphée et Eurydice received the bronze award for ‘Performance Design’. At the 2018 Naledi Theatre Awards in South Africa he was awarded ‘Best Set Design’ for West Side Story.
Image credit: Bill Cooper
Featured Work
Orphée et Eurydice
The design for Orphée et Eurydice is centred on music, space and light. With the co-directors and conductor, we discussed the orchestra being onstage so that the music could literally drive the action.
Orphée channels his grief through music and Gluck uses the chorus, dancers and musicians to propel the story forward. The orchestra were placed on a platform which either rose above the action or descended to from a pit onstage and we extended the stage by building over the original orchestra pit. Transformation from a world of shadows to a place of shimmering light in the Elysian fields was achieved using three copper ceiling pieces which could be raised, lowered or angled. They also functioned as acoustic panels and were fitted with hundreds of lamps so that we could fill the stage with curtains of light. Costumes were either black, yellow or blue-green and used a combination of digital and hand painting techniques.
