Jérôme Kaplan
Biography
Born in Paris in 1964, he studied set design at L’Ecole de la Rue Blanche. Since graduating in 1987 he has created the costumes for free operas staged by A. G. Valdès: Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Quixote, Motezuma, and two works staged by Ch. Nessi at the Bastille Opera: Noye’s Fludde (Britten) and Journal d’un usager de l’espace (G. Perec, D. Lockwood). In 1991 Kaplan discovered the world of Dance when he met the choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot, since when he has conceived sets and costumes for numerous ballets: L’enfant et lesSortilèges, Roméo et Juliette, Cendrillon, Casse-Noisette Circus,OEil pour OEil. In December 2009 he created sets and costumes for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo’s Scheherazade.
He designed costumes for the ballet Raise the Red Lantern (choreographer: Xin Peng Wang) for the National Ballet of China, Beijing. He created sets and costumes for: Bertrand d’At’s choreography of The Prince of the Pagodas for Strasbourg Opera; In the Mood for Love for the Shanghai Ballet; The Wood Nymph with Xin Pen Wang for Finnish National Ballet. With Karine Saporta he collaborated on Feu le music hall (Comédie-Française) and Dans le regard de la nuit (Cairo Opera). He also worked on: La fille mal gardée (Korean National Ballet), Ondine (D. Nixon, Strasbourg Opera) and The Sleeping Beauty (Northern Ballet, Leeds), Notre-Dame (P. Isberg, Royal Opera, Stockholm).
Kaplan has continued working on opera and drama productions: Carmen Arabo-andalouse and Die Entführung aus dem Serail střed by O. Desbordes; The Turn of the Screw, directed by S. Anglade, Angers Nantes Opéra; L’âne et le ruisseau, directed by N. Lormeau, Comédie-Française; and When the Night Begins (H. Kureishi), directed by Garance, Théâtre National de Chaillot.
In 2010 he created sets and costumes for Don Quixote (A. Ratmansky, Het Nationale Ballet, Amsterdam) and The Sleeping Beauty (C. Wheeldon, Det Kongelige Ballet, Copenhagen). He is currently creating sets and costumes for April’s world premiere at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre of A. Ratmansky’s ballet version of Balzac’s Les Illusions Perdues (music: L. Desyatnikov).