Patrick Kinmonth

Patrick Charles Kinmonth (born 27 August 1957) is an Anglo-Irish opera director and designer, filmmaker, writer, painter, interior designer, art editor, creative director and curator. He is known for his many stage, costume, interior and architectural designs. Kinmonth works principally as an opera director, and has been awarded for his work as exhibition curator and designer.

Early life

Patrick Charles Kinmonth is the youngest of four children. His father, Maurice Kinmonth (1917–2009), was a consultant plastic surgeon, who encouraged Patrick's talent for drawing. He attended Uppingham School and later, in 1977, studied English Language and Literature at Mansfield College, University of Oxford He also enrolled as an associate student at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

During his undergraduate years at Oxford, he regularly participated in theatre productions at the Oxford Playhouse and elsewhere as director, designer and actor. He also became the art director of The Isis (the Oxford University magazine). After graduating with a first-class degree in 1979, Kinmonth moved to Venice to continue his work as a painter and lecturer on modern art and poetry. In 1981, Patrick returned to the UK and won the British Vogue's Talent Competition. He was appointed as arts editor of Vogue and has since contributed articles on emerging artists, designers, architects, and directors to various publications including British Vogue, Vogue Italia, American Vogue and Vanity Fair.

Career

''Vogue'' and beyond

Kinmonth's role at British Vogue included creative direction for fashion and portraiture shoots. He commissioned work from, and collaborated with, many renowned photographers, ranging from André Kertész, Jacques Henri Lartigue and Horst to David Bailey, Mario Testino, Tessa Traeger and Bruce Weber. Kinmonth established working relationships with Testino and Traeger for Vogue. In 2003 Kinmonth curated ''A Gardener's Labyrinth: Portraits of People, Plants and Places,'' an exhibition of Traeger's photography for the National Portrait Gallery, and wrote the text for the eponymous book, translated into Dutch and German.

Towards the end of the 1980s, Kinmonth returned to painting. His canvasses were exhibited by Richard Demarco Gallery at the International Contemporary Art Fair at Olympia and were used by Jasper Conran as scenic backdrops to complement his costume designs for David Bintley's one-act ballet Tombeaux for The Royal Ballet (1993).

Stage designs

Kinmonth began working with Robert Carsen in 1993. They first met in the mid-1980s during Carsen's time as a student actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Carsen invited Kinmonth to design sets and costumes for his new production of Janáček's Káťa Kabanová for the Canadian Opera Company. Their collaboration evolved over the next decade to deliver critically acclaimed stagings of, among others, Handel's Semele (co-produced by Vlaamse Opera and English National Opera), Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen (Cologne Opera), and a notable series of operas by Janáček (Vlaamse Opera).

The Carsen-Kinmonth vision of Wagner's tetralogy, presented as a complete cycle in Cologne in 2004, became the first Ring to be staged in Shanghai, presented twice by Cologne Opera at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in September 2010. It has been called the "Green Ring" to reflect the staging's attention to ecological and environmental concerns. Kát'a Kabanová, conceived for Vlaamse Opera, has traveled extensively and was chosen to introduce the work to the Teatro alla Scala in 2006. It has also reached audiences in Tokyo, Strasbourg, Cologne and Madrid. The latter staging, filmed and subsequently released on DVD, was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2009.

Kinmonth's set and costume designs for Carsen's staging of La Traviata were commissioned by La Fenice for the Venetian theatre's post-fire reopening in 2004. The production was presented in Tokyo (2005) and in Beijing (2006) and has become established as the traditional season opener at La Fenice: the Carsen-Kinmonth production of La traviata was revived at the beginning of 2007/08, 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons.

In 2000, Kinmonth worked for the first time with the director Pierre Audi

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