COCTEAU (Jean). - Lot 71

COCTEAU (Jean). Born in Maisons-Laffitte. 1889-1963. Poet, playwright, cartoonist and film-maker. L.A.S. "Jean" to "Très cher Heinz" [choreographer Heinz Rosen. [Munich], Feb[rier] 4, 1962. 4 pp. in-8 in blue ballpoint pen, one of which entirely adorned with sketches with autograph comments. Jean Cocteau takes advantage of a short stay in Munich in February 1962, to present L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle with Two Heads), to detail his new project, a mimodrama entitled Le Fils de l'air (The Son of Air), to choreographer Heinz Rosen, with whom he had collaborated on the ballet La Dame à la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn) 10 years earlier. The project fell through due to Jean Cocteau's death the following year in 1963...I have some good news for you, as I have completely reworked Le Fils de l'air (Luft Rind), a mimodrama with dances, songs, recitations and music. I've finished the costume models, and you'll have to find people to make them, which is a rarity in Germany... For the back of the stage, he plans ...a cyclorama or a canvas of pale yellow sky with a red sun hanging from wires [...]. The background will be photographic! ruins with a palisade of the area (behind which the gypsies hide). We'll also need four white horse heads (like the black horses in my film). [...] There will be a sheet behind which we can see shadow puppets of gypsies and kids. To the left and right are wooden platforms (as in The Lady and the Unicorn). On the left stand three or four singers and narrators in bullfighter costumes and horned masks. On the right, the small orchestra and a soloist in evening dress. [A page of sketches follows.] I'll also make a model [...] of the caravan, but I'd prefer it to be photographic, so warns our young photographer that he'll have to prepare (photograph) a caravan with a small operable window with a red curtain. I think we'll have a lot of material to work with, which I plan to write up on my return from Munich... Cocteau adds in postscript: ...Tell your musician that there will be songs and five small pieces of music to accompany the dances - Plus the bateleur's drum...