L'assedio di Calais
"Madeleine Boyd’s excellent designs — smeary black stage, grubby brown costumes, primitive pikes and long bows — suggest a primordial struggle between prehistoric tribes. The set also lets the action unfold on three levels, with the French leaders threatened by the English from upstage and their own starving populace from below, the latter emerging from beneath the stage like rabid animals to snarl into the footlights."
Richard Morrison The Times
"The simplicity of the plot was matched by the simplicity of Madeleine Boyd’s stage design; a trapezoidal platform leading off into the distance, with a dark backing which opened slightly to give the impression of claustrophobia and siege."
Mark Pullinger Opera Britannia
"with clever designs by Madeleine Boyd"
George Hall The Guardian
La Cenerentola
"well directed scenes of organized chaos buzzing away through Madeleine Boyd's lovely scenes."
Matti Edén Expressen.se
"Designer Madeleine Boyd who was apparently clearly delighted with the ample space Malmo Opera has to offer, made good use of its wide spectrum"
Johan Malmberg /Torgny Nilsson HD.se
"striking production design and costumes by Madeleine Boyd."
Martin Lagerholm Kristianstadbladet
" lively and imaginative costumes created by Madeleine Boyd to match her equally suggestive environments."
JAN HÅKANSSON Hallandsposten.se
"Boyd's neat contemporary party dress is a real delight!"
Karin Helander SvD.se
La fedelta premiata
"No detail of the Big Brother phenomenon went unobserved, from the impressively-built ‘retro’ set – complete with neon strip lights, plush cushions, ever shifting microphone/camera balls, Jacuzzi, and diary-room (which provided good rationale for some of the characters’ monologues) – to instructions issued in golden envelopes and pointless tasks involving oven-gloves or giant toy spiders."
Graham Rogers Classical Source
"...the freshness and commitment of their Haydn staging... gave pure pleasure... with a witty, Big Brother reality TV setting..."
Fiona Maddocks The Guardian
"...not only a worthwhile but also a truly uplifting experience. The contemporary setting and mood of the Big Brother atmosphere made the silly libretto palatable, even enjoyable. In the final scene the new pound notes arriving in a big suitcase – and flying around the stage – connected with the news of the day and made the production even more relevant."
Agnes Kory Musical Criticism
Pelléas et Mélisande
'Madeleine Boyd's ingeniously compact staging also responds to director Alessandro Talevi's efforts to undercut the emotional obscurity of the drama with an enhanced intimacy…'
Guy Dammann - Observer
‘…Madeleine Boyd’s multi-level set transforms it (the Lilian Baylis Studio) into a claustrophobic space that brings you face to face with Debussy’s hapless characters. Boyd and director Alessandro Talevi have removed the cod-medievalism, relocating the action to the time of its composition…’****
Nick Kimberley - Evening Standard
'...Madeleine Boyd’s ingenious three-tier set...’*****
Andrew Clark - Financial TImes
'For an opera usually involving an orchestra that could fill an aircraft hangar, this is quite an achievement.
And it works, largely thanks to the quirky imagination of Talevi and designer Madeleine Boyd.'****
Erica Jeal - The Guardian
'Conductor Dominic Wheeler and the orchestra play from under and behind the three darkened walkways of Madeleine Boyd's clever set, as four red-stockinged grisettes operate pulleys and electroliers, their pinched white faces striped with rouge, sooty bonnets clamped to their crimped curls. This is a Paris Debussy would have recognised from his flirtations with bohemian life: the Paris of Lautrec, Hocquet, Gaby Dupont...'
Anna Picard - The Independent
'In Madeleine Boyd’s design, three levels of dark walkways are framed by cardboard cut-outs from Toulouse-Lautrec. And the characters emerge from a fractured Art Nouveau demi-world into the great gaping nowhere of the kingdom of Allemonde. The Middle Ages give way to an uneasy Victorian milieu, suffocating and alienating the human spirit. None of this is in the least didactic.'****
Hilary Finch - The Times
'In the Lillian Baylis Studio, Independent Opera's swansong production of Pelléas et Mélisande featured an extraordinary performance from Andrew Foster-Williams as Golaud, imaginative designs from Madeleine Boyd and a revelatory new orchestration by Stephen McNeff.'
Anna Picard - 'Classical Music in 2008' The Independent
'... the design, set and direction (Madeleine Boyd/Alessandro Talevi) worked memorably well... This was opera as it should be but seldom is — innovative yet respectful, ambitious yet pragmatic, and above all committed to the development of talent in all departments.'
Sue Loder - Opera Today
La Colombe/L'Occasione fa il Ladro
'...Madeleine Boyd's chic designs...'
Neil Fisher - The Times
'Madeleine Boyd's equally accomplished designs brought us Bohemian Paris at a recent date and 1970's Naples'.
George Hall - Opera
The Sofa/The Departure
'... Madeleine Boyd's ingenious horseshoe set, updated The Sofa and played it with such verve that any embarrassment over the 1950s verbal idioms quickly vanished. The way the opera's hedonistic anti-hero "became" the sofa was theatrical magic...'
Andrew Clark - Financial Times
'With minimal staging and great panache, designer Madeleine Boyd and her team made skilful use of the Lilian Baylis Theatre's small but efficient space... Exciting stuff.'*****
Fiona Maddocks - Evening Standard
'Alessandro Talevi’s productions are sharply defined, brilliantly so in the case of the comedy, which Madeleine Boyd’s set and Ryszard Andrzejewski’s costumes transfer to an up-to-the-minute London club... Sharratt’s transformation into a sofa is marvellously done.'
George Hall - The Stage
'The party that the director Alessandro Talevi and designer Madeleine Boyd devise as the framework for this event is very Noughties Hoxton, as are its louche denizens. Everyone on stage looks good, acts well, and sounds marvellous...'*****
Michael Church - The Independent
La Gazzetta
Ruchloser Virtuose des Recyclings
Ende gut – alles gut: Zumindest in Rossinis Oper "La Gazetta“, die in Wildbad stürmisch gefeiert wurde
'Ein Quantensprung indes auch hier. Thaddeus Strassbergers “La Gazzetta”-Regie, bei der [Madeleine] Boyds Eiffelturmszenerie nun regelrecht mitspielt: ein Hauch von totalem Theater, das, einmal losgetreten, nich mehr zu bremsen war. Der ultimative Rossini-Irrwitz – hier wurde er Ereignis. Lauter Verrückte.'
'A quantum leap [for the festival]. Thaddeus Strassberger’s direction, with Madeleine Boyd’s Eiffel Tower scenery played together properly: A breath of total-theater, that once let loose, couldn’t be stopped. The ultimate Rossini crazy-wit truly became an event. And the crazy man, even louder.'
Stuttgarter Nachrichten - 16. Juli 2007
Press
