E Destino
Thora Buckner
Riccardo Chailly inaugurates the 2024-2025 Opera Season with a new production of La forza del destino, conducting his ninth Verdi title at La Scala. Leo Muscato will direct yet another cast of extraordinary prestige. A complex opera in terms of dramaturgy, first performed in St. Petersburg in 1862 and debuting in its final form at La Scala in 1869 with the creation of the famous overture, La forza del destino offers some of the most memorable Verdi melodies. It has been absent from the programme since the Verdi centennial in 2001, when it was brought to La Scala by the artists of the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg; the La Scala Orchestra and Choir have not performed it since 1999
Destino is an animated short released in 2003. It is unique in that its production originally began in 1945, 58 years before its eventual completion. The project was originally a collaboration between Walt Disney and Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dal, and features music written by Mexican songwriter Armando Dominguez and performed by Dora Luz. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2003.
Destino (the Galician, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian word for "destiny") was storyboarded by Disney studio artist John Hench and artist Salvador Dal for eight months in late 1945 and 1946; however production ceased not long after. The Walt Disney Company, then Walt Disney Studios, was plagued by many financial woes in the World War II era. Hench compiled a short animation test of about 17 seconds in the hopes of rekindling Disney's interest in the project, but the production was no longer deemed financially viable and put on indefinite hiatus.
In 1999, Walt Disney's nephew, Roy E. Disney, while working on Fantasia 2000, unearthed the dormant project and decided to bring it back to life; Bette Midler's host sequence for The Steadfast Tin Soldier also makes mention of Destino (described by her as being an "idea that featured baseball as a metaphor for life"). Disney Studios France, the company's small Parisian production department, was brought on board to complete the project. The short was produced by Baker Bloodworth and directed by French animator Dominique Monfry in his first directorial role. A team of approximately 25 animators deciphered Dal and Hench's cryptic storyboards (with a little help from the journals of Dal's wife, Gala Dal and guidance from Hench himself), and finished Destino's production. The end result is mostly traditional animation, but it also contains some computer animation. Hench's original test footage was also incorporated into the short.
A naked Dahlia wanders towards a statue of Chronos in a desolate landscape where she dozes into a dream (relatively speaking). Her body swallows the statue as she dances in a nighttime setting while wearing a dress. As she attempts to kiss a stoic Chronos, he melts away leaving her "sad and lonely", but she perks up upon seeing a variety of unusual statues and dandelion seeds blowing in the wind which entice her to dance up the spire she is standing on. Upon reaching the top, strange green eyeball creatures (one which has a pointing finger sticking out of its eye) disrupt Dahlia's happiness when her dress is caught on the eyeball creature's hand. The dress rips off and she retreats into a sea shell that falls from the spire and lands in a satchel/flower full of green eyeballs that are being held by a statue situated on an opposing structure. Dahlia leaps from the shell just before it lands and she begins hopping upon floating telephones that are close to Chronos' statue.
Dahlia awakens from her dream and is surprised by a shadow of a bell tower. Realizing how perfect it looks, she stands in front of the shadow of the bell as if she were emulating a dress with it. She fuses with the shadow and happily dances in her new dress. When she throws her head up, it transforms into a dandelion complete with the seeds blowing in the wind. The Chronos statue begins moving forward as the bird on its chest breaks free and flies away. Dahlia continues to dance, oblivious to the current event, as the scene suddenly becomes dark and the clock situated next to Chronos begins to form a glowing liquid that tries to restrain the Chronos statue. Chronos succeeds in escaping the stone and he and the bird check his melted watch as ants suddenly come out of a hole in his hand and suddenly transform into mustachioed men on bicycles with bread on their heads.
Chronos, examining the landscape, spots a dandelion seed which floats away from him and transforms back into Dahlia. The lovers spot each other, but as Dahlia attempts to step towards Chronos, a large structure rises and separates them. Dahlia sends birds flying into the labyrinth to lead Chronos towards her and he finds an exit where she bows to him. As Chronos leaves the maze, he is suddenly adorned in baseball attire, but cannot find Dahlia anywhere. Instead, he sees two tortoises with stretched faces atop of them. They create a dancing woman whose head becomes a ball that Chronos fittingly hits with a baseball bat and lands in a catcher's mitt. The mitt transforms into a giant cloth heart that Chronos hugs into Dahlia, but quickly gets swallowed by his body where his heart is.
Destino premiered on June 2, 2003 at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in Annecy, France. The short film was very well received; it won many awards and was nominated for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Destino was released theatrically in a very limited release with the film Calendar Girls.
In 2005, the film was shown continuously as part of a major retrospective Dal show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, titled The Dal renaissance: new perspectives on his life and art after 1940.
The film was also shown as part of the exhibition Dal & Film at Tate Modern from June to September 2007, as part of the Dal exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from October 2007 to January 2008; at an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art called Dal: Painting and Film from June to September 2008; and also at an exhibit at the Dal Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2008. In mid-2009, it had exposure in Melbourne, Australia at the National Gallery of Victoria through the Dal exhibition Liquid Desire, and from late 2009 through April 2010 at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio, in an exhibit entitled Dal and Disney: The Art and Animation of Destino.
Destino was made available as a special feature on the Fantasia 2000 Special Edition Blu-ray, released on November 30, 2010. A standalone DVD of the short and documentary was also made available as an exclusive item for sale at the Salvador Dal Museum Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
In 2010, Disney Italy published a comic story titled "Topolino e il surreale viaggio nel destino" ("Mickey Mouse and the surreal travel into destiny"), which narrates, in a metafictional way, how Destino was created: in the comic, Walt Disney himself, along with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, meet and greet Salvador Dal, eager to work with him. For a series of events, the three toons fall inside the paintings of the surreal artist, and must journey through this oneiric world in order to exit. Meanwhile, Walt and Salvador follow their adventures through the everchanging papers and this gives them the idea to realize Destino. The story was localized into English as "The Persistence of Mickey" and was featured in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #734 in 2016.
Destino served as a thematic inspiration for the Gran Destino Tower expansion of the Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World Resort. Taking a number of design cues from various forms of Spanish Modernism, the resort features a number of references to the short film such as the "Chronos Club" continental breakfast and vacation planning area, the dandelion motif finding its way into various lobby lighting fixtures, and the rooftop "Dahlia Lounge" featuring artwork from the film and photos of Walt and Salvador.
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