Bertrand Castelli
Encyclopedia
Bertrand Castelli was a French producer, director, lighting designer, choreographer, painter and writer best known as the executive producer of many productions of the rock musical
Hair
in partnership with the show's main producer Michael Butler
. Castelli was instrumental in helping the show reach Broadway
and would later lead the effort to introduce Hair to a worldwide theatre audience.
Beginning as an innovative lighting designer for ballet and opera, Castelli tried screenwriting, playwriting, choreographing and directing before becoming a producer of Hair in New York and then masterminding its many international productions. In later years, he became the artist in residence of a Mexican resort, where he created paintings for every room in the resort.
, Bouches-du-Rhône
, France, of Corsica
n heritage. During World War II, he got a job operating the projector at a cinema. Castelli and his friends began to paint and to write and perform plays, operas and ballets to cast aside the gloom of Nazi-occupied Paris. At the age of 17, after the war, he toured Germany operating the lights for a small circus, learning theatre arts and developing innovative lighting techniques.
, Cartier
, Christian Dior
and Cointreau
. The companies were intrigued and provided financing. He then was able to stage a first-class production of his ballet Les Algues, composed by Guy Bernard, and hired the ballerina Janine Charrat to choreograph and dance the lead role. The ballet earned him considerable success and gave him an "entrée to the society of artists" that, at the time, included Louis-Ferdinand Céline
and Jean Paul Sartre. He traveled in Paris art circles and rubbed elbows with Pablo Picasso
, Marcel Marceau
and Jean Cocteau
. According to his daughter, he once worked as Picasso's assistant, and he was an occasional lover of Françoise Gilot, the mother of two of Picasso's children. For the next few years, he created, produced and directed works for Les Ballets Africaines, Champs Elysees Theatre and the Marquis de Cuevas Ballet Company. Other ballets that he worked on were Face To Face and Green Light, Red Light.
At the age of 24, he moved to New York and then on to Hollywood, where MGM offered him a contract. He wrote numerous plays, including The Umbrella which was produced both on Broadway and in London, The Men's Room and A Frenchman in New York, the last of which was turned into a film. He also wrote screenplays, episodes of television shows including The Millionaire, and a musical comedy together with Ogden Nash
and Vernon Duke
. He also choreographed striptease vignettes for The Body Shop, the famous club on Sunset Boulevard
. In Hollywood, he befriended people like Gene Kelly
, Igor Stravinsky
, Aldous Huxley
, Dorothy Parker
and Ray Bradbury
. Among other things, he had a role in the 1959 film Thunder in the Sun
, a western starring Susan Hayward
.
and eventual Hair director Tom O'Horgan
. When the Hair team was unable to find a Broadway theater owner that would accept the controversial show, Castelli met with Michael Butler's father Paul and convinced him to use his considerable political clout to make the Biltmore Theater available. Shortly after Hair opened on Broadway in 1968, Butler gave Castelli the job of leading the many foreign language productions of the show. Castelli made the decision to translate Hair into the local language of each country at a time when Broadway shows were always done in English. He produced and sometimes directed companies in France, Germany, Mexico and several other countries, unearthing local and international talent such as Donna Summer
and the French singer Julien Clerc
.
After Hair, Castelli returned to producing ballet, opera and musical comedy for a decade. In 1972, he wrote and produced Richard
, a pre-Watergate lampoon of President Richard M. Nixon, starring John Carradine
, Vivian Blaine
and Mickey Rooney
. He also invented a game similar to table-tennis called Plaff, for which he invented a paddle with two parallel surfaces connected by a hand grip. He married and later divorced Lorees Yerby, who was a co-director of Richard. They had two daughters, Pandora and Josephine.
During the last 15 years of his life, Castelli lived mostly in the Yucatán
, Mexico, where he was artist in residence at the Maroma Resort and Spa in Riviera Maya
, not far from Cancún
. He spent his retirement writing and painting abstract, Spanish-influenced, colorful artworks whose subject was often dancers and human movement, surrounded in retirement by his artistic young friends. He created a painting for every room in the resort. The New York Times described him as "a friend of the famous and not-so-famous, a cultivator of people, an avid pot smoker and devoted sensualist". His friend Michael Butler described him as a "crazy showman... the guy with the business suit and beads".
Castelli died at the age of 78 in a hospital near the resort after being hit by a speedboat during his daily swim.
Rock musical
A rock musical is a musical theatre work with rock music. The genre of rock musical may overlap somewhat with album musicals, concept albums and song cycles, as they sometimes tell a story through the rock music, and some album musicals and concept albums become rock musicals...
Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
in partnership with the show's main producer Michael Butler
Michael Butler (producer)
Michael Butler is an American theatrical producer best known for bringing the rock musical Hair from the Public Theater to Broadway in 1968. During his time as Hair producer he was dubbed by the press as "the hippie millionaire"...
. Castelli was instrumental in helping the show reach Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
and would later lead the effort to introduce Hair to a worldwide theatre audience.
Beginning as an innovative lighting designer for ballet and opera, Castelli tried screenwriting, playwriting, choreographing and directing before becoming a producer of Hair in New York and then masterminding its many international productions. In later years, he became the artist in residence of a Mexican resort, where he created paintings for every room in the resort.
Biography
Castelli was born in Salon-de-ProvenceSalon-de-Provence
Salon-de-Provence is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in southern France. It is the location of an important air base.-History:Salon was a Gallo-Roman oppidum well positioned on the salt trade routes between Adriatic, Atlantic and Mediterranean seas, hence its name...
, Bouches-du-Rhône
Bouches-du-Rhône
Bouches-du-Rhône is a department in the south of France named after the mouth of the Rhône River. It is the most populous department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Its INSEE and postal code is 13.-History of the department:...
, France, of Corsica
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
n heritage. During World War II, he got a job operating the projector at a cinema. Castelli and his friends began to paint and to write and perform plays, operas and ballets to cast aside the gloom of Nazi-occupied Paris. At the age of 17, after the war, he toured Germany operating the lights for a small circus, learning theatre arts and developing innovative lighting techniques.
Early career
Castelli began his professional artistic career in France working for ballet and opera companies in Paris, starting with lighting design. To finance his ambitions to create a serious ballet, at the age of 21 he first created a short ballet called Le Coleur de Fische in which he costumed dancers as large advertising posters, which came to life advertising each product through a three-minute solo. He boldly pitched the unique concept to large companies such as PerrierPerrier
Perrier is a brand of bottled mineral water made from a spring in Vergèze in the Gard département of France. The spring is naturally carbonated...
, Cartier
Cartier SA
Cartier S.A., commonly known as Cartier , is a French luxury jeweler and watch manufacturer. The corporation carries the name of the Cartier family of jewellers whose control ended in 1964 and who were known for numerous pieces including the "Bestiary" , the diamond necklace created for Bhupinder...
, Christian Dior
Christian Dior
Christian Dior , was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.-Life:...
and Cointreau
Cointreau
Cointreau is a brand of triple sec produced in Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou, France. It is drunk as an apéritif and digestif, and is a component of several well-known cocktails. It was originally called "Curaçao Blanco Triple Sec".-Production:...
. The companies were intrigued and provided financing. He then was able to stage a first-class production of his ballet Les Algues, composed by Guy Bernard, and hired the ballerina Janine Charrat to choreograph and dance the lead role. The ballet earned him considerable success and gave him an "entrée to the society of artists" that, at the time, included Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
and Jean Paul Sartre. He traveled in Paris art circles and rubbed elbows with Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau was an internationally acclaimed French actor and mime most famous for his persona as Bip the Clown.-Early years:...
and Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
. According to his daughter, he once worked as Picasso's assistant, and he was an occasional lover of Françoise Gilot, the mother of two of Picasso's children. For the next few years, he created, produced and directed works for Les Ballets Africaines, Champs Elysees Theatre and the Marquis de Cuevas Ballet Company. Other ballets that he worked on were Face To Face and Green Light, Red Light.
At the age of 24, he moved to New York and then on to Hollywood, where MGM offered him a contract. He wrote numerous plays, including The Umbrella which was produced both on Broadway and in London, The Men's Room and A Frenchman in New York, the last of which was turned into a film. He also wrote screenplays, episodes of television shows including The Millionaire, and a musical comedy together with Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...
and Vernon Duke
Vernon Duke
Vernon Duke was a Russian-American composer/songwriter, who also wrote under his original name Vladimir Dukelsky. He is best known for "Taking a Chance on Love" with lyrics by Ted Fetter and John Latouche, "I Can't Get Started" with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, "April in Paris" with lyrics by E. Y...
. He also choreographed striptease vignettes for The Body Shop, the famous club on Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard is a street in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Coast Highway at the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Palisades...
. In Hollywood, he befriended people like Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
, Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
and Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
. Among other things, he had a role in the 1959 film Thunder in the Sun
Thunder in the Sun
Thunder in the Sun is a 1959 western film made by Carrollton Inc and Seven Arts Productions and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Russell Rouse and produced by Clarence Greene from a screenplay by Russell Rouse and...
, a western starring Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward was an American actress.After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone with the Wind . Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting...
.
Hair and later career
At the time Hair opened off-Broadway in 1967, Castelli was the director of the Harkness Ballet Company, where he incorporated experimental ideas from Andy WarholAndy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
and eventual Hair director Tom O'Horgan
Tom O'Horgan
Tom O'Horgan was an American theatre and film director, composer, actor and musician. He is best known for his Broadway work as director of the hit musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar...
. When the Hair team was unable to find a Broadway theater owner that would accept the controversial show, Castelli met with Michael Butler's father Paul and convinced him to use his considerable political clout to make the Biltmore Theater available. Shortly after Hair opened on Broadway in 1968, Butler gave Castelli the job of leading the many foreign language productions of the show. Castelli made the decision to translate Hair into the local language of each country at a time when Broadway shows were always done in English. He produced and sometimes directed companies in France, Germany, Mexico and several other countries, unearthing local and international talent such as Donna Summer
Donna Summer
LaDonna Adrian Gaines , known by her stage name, Donna Summer, is an American singer/songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s. She has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Summer is a five-time Grammy winner and was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach...
and the French singer Julien Clerc
Julien Clerc
Julien Clerc, , born as Paul Alain Leclerc on 4 October 1947 in Paris, Clerc's parents divorced when he was still young. He grew up listening to classical music in his father's home, while his mother introduced him to the music of such singers as Georges Brassens and Edith Piaf...
.
After Hair, Castelli returned to producing ballet, opera and musical comedy for a decade. In 1972, he wrote and produced Richard
Richard (1972 film)
Richard is a 1972 film directed by Harry Hurwitz. The film was notable as it was a lampoon of President Richard Nixon before the Watergate scandal.-Cast:* Imogene Bliss ... Mother* Marvin Braverman ... Hardhat* John Carradine ... Plastic Surgeon...
, a pre-Watergate lampoon of President Richard M. Nixon, starring John Carradine
John Carradine
John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...
, Vivian Blaine
Vivian Blaine
Vivian Blaine was an American actress and singer best known for originating the role of Miss Adelaide in the musical theater production Guys and Dolls.-Life and career:...
and Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...
. He also invented a game similar to table-tennis called Plaff, for which he invented a paddle with two parallel surfaces connected by a hand grip. He married and later divorced Lorees Yerby, who was a co-director of Richard. They had two daughters, Pandora and Josephine.
During the last 15 years of his life, Castelli lived mostly in the Yucatán
Yucatán
Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....
, Mexico, where he was artist in residence at the Maroma Resort and Spa in Riviera Maya
Riviera Maya
Riviera Maya, also known as the Mayan Riviera, is a tourism district following the coastal Highway 307 which parallels the Caribbean coastline of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, located on the eastern portion of the Yucatán Peninsula...
, not far from Cancún
Cancún
Cancún is a city of international tourism development certified by the UNWTO . Located on the northeast coast of Quintana Roo in southern Mexico, more than 1,700 km from Mexico City, the Project began operations in 1974 as Integrally Planned Center, a pioneer of FONATUR Cancún is a city of...
. He spent his retirement writing and painting abstract, Spanish-influenced, colorful artworks whose subject was often dancers and human movement, surrounded in retirement by his artistic young friends. He created a painting for every room in the resort. The New York Times described him as "a friend of the famous and not-so-famous, a cultivator of people, an avid pot smoker and devoted sensualist". His friend Michael Butler described him as a "crazy showman... the guy with the business suit and beads".
Castelli died at the age of 78 in a hospital near the resort after being hit by a speedboat during his daily swim.