Gallery Met Shorts Presents A Film By Elizabeth Colomba Set To Music From Massenet's CENDRILLON

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Gallery Met Shorts presents a film by artist Elizabeth Colomba, which will be shown in more than 2,000 movie theaters in 73 countries during the intermission of the Met's final Live in HD performance of this season. Gallery Met Shorts allows celebrated visual artists to use film, animation and video to create original artworks set to music from operas in the Met's season. Colomba's film will premiere during the intermission of the live transmission of the new Met production of Massenet's Cendrillon, starring Joyce DiDonato in the title role, Kathleen Kim as the Fairy Godmother, Alice Coote as Prince Charming, Stephanie Blythe as Madame de la Haltière, and Laurent Naouri as Pandolfe, on Saturday, April 28 at 12:55pm ET.

In Colomba's short film, shot at New York's Park Avenue Armory, audiences will see Cinderella (Grace Bol) getting ready for the ball with the assistance of her Fairy Godmother (a cameo by the artist herself). Colomba drew inspiration for the mood and look of the film from her painting, The Denial of Saint Peter. She includes an image of another of her works, The Reading, in Cendrillon's gown, created in collaboration with designer Lashun Costor. The third of her works to feature is the still life Coconut, a reference to the artist's Caribbean heritage.

Colomba said: "I decided to underscore the iconography in the story (of Cendrillon); the overarching theme of time in relationship to womanhood; and the almost gothic tone of the narrative... It was interesting to think about the premiere of my Cinderella story coinciding with the historical event of a young American woman's marriage to an actual prince. The timing couldn't be more perfect."

Dodie Kazanjian, founding director of GM, who has organized the Met's visual arts initiatives since 2006, said: "Elizabeth Colomba's lush and transformative paintings combine seamlessly with the narrative, and offer an exhilarating new look at the age-old Cinderella story."

For Colomba, this is her first time working in film. The figurative painter adapts the technical approach and themes (including the feminine sacred, mythology, history, and allegory) of traditional Western portraiture in order to interrupt stereotypical representation of the black body. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem and Princeton University. Elizabeth Colomba was born in France, descended from parents from Martinique.

For more information on the Met's contemporary visual arts initiatives, please visit http://www.metopera.org/Visit/Exhibitions/.

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