We caught up with designer Joanna Parker who talked us through some of the works of art that she had found particularly relevant and inspirational when conceiving and designing Opera North’s new production of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier. 

Jacques Louis David: The Death of Bara (1794) This unfinished painting by the greatest artist of the Revolution shows Joseph Bara, a young drummer boy in the Republican Army who was killed by Royalist insurgents during the War in the Vendée in December 1793.

Accounts of his having been put to death because he refused to surrender the horses he was leading were embellished by Robespierre and others as propaganda. The legend arose that, having been trapped by the enemy and being ordered to cry "Vive le Roi" ("Long live the King") to save his life, he chose instead to die crying "Vive la République" ("Long live the Republic").

Jacques Louis David: The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799) The pinnacle of David’s heroic, neoclassical style, this painting shows the Sabine Women interposing themselves between the warring armies of their own tribe and Rome, ending the battle and uniting the Roman nation.

Imprisoned after Robespierre's downfall, David was visited by his royalist ex-wife, who had divorced him over his vote for the death of Louis XVI. He was inspired to paint the work in honour of her, and as a symbol of love prevailing over conflict in France at large.

JP: “We were particularly interested in exploring the physical language in paintings such as this - the extension of the body, the importance of gesture and the monumental form. David’s return to classicism also suggests a historic, heroic precedent for the events of the Revolution: history repeating itself.”

Jacques Louis David: Study for The Oath of the Horatii, Sabina (1783)

Painted in the years before the Revolution, David’s Oath of the Horatii is based on another Roman legend derived from Livy, and again refers to the suffering of women in conflict. This study depicts a grief-stricken figure who can be seen on the right of the final composition.

JP: “Once again, the power of gesture is foremost: David explores the possibilities of storytelling through the physical language of the body, something we’ll also be attempting.”

Francisco Goya: The Eagle Hunter (c.1819)

In The Disasters of War (1810-1820) the great Spanish painter and printmaker lays bare the human cost of his country’s conflict with Revolutionary France in 82 prints, which retain their power to shock to this day.

This tragicomic depiction of a peasant robbing an eagle’s nest comes from the same late period. It is at once humorous and terrible, like much of his work at the time an allegory for human frailty and foolishness.

JP: “It is not possible to represent the Terror. All we can do is allude to it in an oblique way. We can see how artists of the period tried to give a sense of what was happening around them, in this nightmarish Goya sketch for example.”

George Cruikshank: The Radical’s Arms (1819)

The Revolution sparked fierce debate in Britain, with Edmund Burke’s condemnation in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791) quickly countered by Mary Wollstonecroft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man.

This caricature shows a sensationalist, conservative British reaction during the Napoleonic era. Cruikshank warns of the danger of the ‘natural order’ being overturned in England as it had in France, with a burning globe tipped upside-down and the degenerate radicals’ motto 'No God! No Religion! No King! No Constitution.'

Cy Twombly: Venus and Adonis (1978)

An American abstract painter who spent much of his life in Italy, Twombly, like David, drew on classical myth for his themes. His paintings are often entirely composed of scrawled writing reminiscent of graffiti. Scatalogical elements like the childish phallus seen here, or the obscene language in Olympia (1957) undercut the lofty subject matter.

JP: “We will be exploring themes of graffiti in the French Revolution. The idea of making a mark is symbolic of the essence of the Revolution. People were empowered by the physical act of writing, and there was a sense of people using the streets to post their own slogans.”

Director Annabel Arden will be joined by art historian and graffiti expert Dr Richard Clay for a detailed discussion of this aspect of the background to Chénier in Revolution! at the Howard Assembly Room on Thursday 14 January.

Stephan Huber: Arbeiten im Reichtum (1983)

German artist Stephan Huber (b.1952) plays with scale and materials, often placing recognisable objects in unusual and disorientating situations in his installations.

JP: "This contemporary work perfectly expresses the weight of servitude as evident in the disparity between the aristocracy and their servants in the opera.”