
2005
Director Scheffer registered a performance of the Tea Opera by Chinese composer Tan Dun (who won an Oscar in 2001 with his score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Scheffer interlaces the images with interviews with Dun, stage director Pierre Audi and librettist Xu Ying, about the opera and the role tea and oriental philosophy play in this work. Using monochrome, sometimes abstract images (in yellow, blue, red and green), close-ups of plants and flowers and images of the Chinese nature and people (sometimes accelerated or decelerated, sometimes in black-and-white), he mirrors the stylised opera performance and Dun's reflective music.

Grace Bumbry is Carmen

Song of the Hands

Adolphe Appia Visionary of Invisible

Pavarotti, Birth of a Pop Star

The Sound of Identity

Rusalka

Chillin' at the Bank House Cafe

Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle

Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera

Anna Netrebko und Rolando Villazón singen "La Traviata"

Confession of the Vanished

Looking for Don Giovanni

Patrice Chéreau, Pascal Greggory, une autre solitude

The Paris Opera

Man of Three Worlds: Luchino Visconti

Bamboo Theatre

Tea War: The Adventures of Robert Fortune

Arabella

Andrea Chenier

Bessho Tea Factory