OPERA CINEMA thoughts + videos!!!
Note: These are not ranked in anyway. This is my own subjective roadmap.
IF YOU WANT MOVIES SKIP DOWN THE PAGE. I POSTED 13 VIDEOS!!! OPERA FILMS !!! FULL MOVIES!!!!
My tastes run towards the weird and gruesome so there is probably an overrepresenation of that kind of reperetoire on this list.
Also note: These videos were NOT uploaded by me. This article is just resource agreggation for what already exists on the interwebs. The urresource is operaonvideo.
A few observations:
IMO, watching film is useful for 3 reasons:
It builds a visual library in your brain. Imagination is rooted in the brain’s associative ability to connect thing to thing. (*I’m no brain scientist). Having an expansive library in your brain makes the associative dance more interesting!
It demonstrates what works and doesn’t work. People have been plugging away at this art form for years. Brilliant people. And most of it is bad. Watching can be a great way to learn from the past mistakes of brilliant people and (hopefully) avoid making the mistakes yourself. Then steal, or “reference” all the good stuff.
It is fun at least some of the time. A lot of the time, it feels like homework. Then a piece comes along that feels like it was made for you and it is all worth it.
The “Golden Age” of opera film was in the 1980s, at least by the metrics of amount made + weirdness
OTT (over the top) is a good descriptor for many of these efforts. What can you say, opera is opera!
Unsurprising homogeneity of artists in this list. That will necessarily change in this new creative wave.
Everyone who loves opera should watch the Andrzej Zulawski Boris Godunov linked below. If you only watch one of these films, watch that one.
Opera is so weird. Like, way weirder than we ever acknowledge.
Our current moment is the age of indie opera filmmaking, even though, by industry standards, there was never a studio age.
Covid forces the industry (esp. in America) to consider how small “opera” can actually be. We are seeing mass experimentation on the micro micro micro scale. Something instructive might emerge eventually.
If youtube is our distribution medium, film is only a partial resource. The idioms of youtube decorate traditional filmmaking in crazy, exciting, often overwrought ways. Figuring out how to incorporate these idioms into our new film attempts might help us make something good.
Defining Terms
When talking about opera on film or theater on film, you have to take into consideration that two distinct languages are existing in the same space. The language of theater and the language of cinema.
Theater has something to do with live performance/ the performance as a continuous experience. Theatrical presentation is dependent on space + the relationship between the audience and performer. (+ so much other theoretical stuff that is super interesting if that is your jam).
Cinema is a language of construction. Every shot, location, set, and costume is designed expressly to be captured on video. The perspective of the camera is primary, every aspect of production bends around the lens.
Anytime you put opera on film, you have to think about the balance of these two languages.
CINEMATIC vs. THEATRICAL: Since opera is a theatrical art form meant to be experienced live, it is important to acknowledge it’s theatricality. When something is deemed “overly theatrical” it is referring to something about artificiality. Potentially in contrast to the word ‘natural’.
PBS Great Performances and The Met: Live in HD are filmed theater, not opera films, even though they apply cinematic language (perspective of the lens) to the live performance.
13 films + Articles + thoughts from me
This article, Fatal Attraction: Cinema and Opera from Opera Vision is a great primer on the relationship between cinema and opera.
STARTING OFF
The Tales of Hoffmann, dir. Michael Powell + Eric Pressberg (1951)
Good essay by Bruce Eder on the Tales of Hoffmann from the Criterion collection
Excerpt from this essay by Jeff Seroy:
“Why all the fuss? What is Tales of Hoffmann? Simply put, it’s a film version of Jacques Offenbach’s opera with dance added. But it’s also a swerving, hyperornamental, terminally self-aware, grandly ambitious, experimental bag of tricks, at once dazzling and daze-inducing.”
MS fragments
Maximal cinema
hyperornamental
Total cinema vs composed cinema
attempt to include all visual arts in one single space
2. THE MAGIC FLUTE, dir. Ingmar Bergman (1975)
From Peter Cowie,
When does an opera become a film? Certainly in Act Two, when the Queen of the Night, her face transformed into a mask of fury by waxen make-up and a livid green filter, harangues Pamina in Der Hölle Rache. And certainly in the climactic sequence when Monostatos and his minions advance threateningly towards the camera. In spite of such frissons, and for all the inevitable skulls that mock the hapless Papageno in the House of Trials, this is a witty, rumbustious Flute, played and sung at fast tempo throughout.
MS fragments
A cinematic adaptation of a theatrical experience
constantly asking the question of when does an opera become a film? When does it lift off?
beauty of the color, shot by the extraordinary Sven Nykvist.
sound design extends the musical experience by layering the grand soundscape of the singers and orchestra with the human sounds of the actors: footsteps, chewing, whispers.
With the magic flute, Bergman invents a genre that we now take for granted.
ALSO watch everything by Bergman.
3 . Elektra, dir. Gotz Friedrich (1982)
MS fragments
INSANE! THE CLOSE UPS! MAD MAX but ELEKTRA!
Pairs with: Mother! by Darren Aronovksy
Also: Fassbinder, The Bitter Tears of Petra van Kant. Different realities, parallel emotional worlds.
4. Boris Godunov, dir. Andrzej Zulawski
Smart ideas from David Cairnes. (Do read that essay if you watch this film. And do watch this film.)
A particularly evocative bit:
Shamelessly theatrical in its design, the film begins with an audience attending a performance in a nineteenth-century opera house, before exploding the fourth wall and the viewer's mind, bursting out onto giant sets and exteriors which could never be contained within a proscenium. Yet the stylisation of the stage is never abandoned, with real landscapes transformed by carefully placed fake buildings, and trees and rocks painted, in the manner of Antonioni, to impart the richness of a Van Gogh. All this is shot by Żuławski's ceaselessly, aggressively roving camera: you have to imagine the Scorsese of Goodfellas doing one too many lines of coke and going all Mad Max, determined to drive his dolly crashing through the cinema screen and into the audience's laps.
MS Fragments:
THIS IS A MUST WATCH. It is Weird and Wild with capital W’s. It is a director really engaging with the tension between these two languages.
Everything is thrown at the wall.
Possible pairing: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Buñuel), or Opening Night (Cassavettes). Neither are as wizzbang, but both are excellent explorations of the human performance within and beyond the boundaries of theater.
Is Ruggero Raimondi opera’s greatest movie star? (No offense to the legacy of Anna Moffo, of course)
Michael Powell on drugs.
Fluidity between theatrical and cinematic worlds. Both, constantly, ALL THE TIME!
5. Carmen, dir. Francesco Rosi
From a 1984 NYTimes review:
With the exception of several sequences, Mr. Rosi doesn't attempt to embellish the original opera by opening it up in obvious ways to take advantage of the camera's mobility. Yet, when he does do just that, he does it with purposeful effect.
The film's opening sequence is a brutal, sorrowful intimation of things to come - close-ups, in slow-motion, of a great bull in the last moments of his unequal fight with the torero. As the bull, blood pulsating from the wounds in his body and then gushing from his mouth, struggles in ever smaller circles to renew his attack, we hear the cheers of the crowd, which become a kind of prelude to the familiar overture that, here, suddenly sounds less commonplace than ironic.
MS Fragments:
Rather than stage lame productions that attempt to evoke this film’s mise-en-scène, we should just play the film. It’ll scratch the same itch for less money and general suffering.
I think of this in the same way I think of the recentish film adaption of Rent. It’s more or less the thing, albeit it with some camera stuff and cinematic flow.
Raimondi. What a guy.
6. Cavalleria Rusticana, dir. Franco Zeffirelli (1981)
IMO, not as good as his La Traviata, but still useful to understanding how he is thinking about theater vs cinema.
MS Fragments:
Zeffirelli…what can you say. Not my thing. But so impressive. He is actively trying to close the distance between theater and cinema.
THE NEXT THREE
7. Parsifal, dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg (1982)
This is the kind of film that people write long analytical books about. Both because the subject matter attracts such obsessive and dedicated scholarship, and because Syberberg is an artist trying to think deeply about the German construction of identity + mythology + symbolism.
Interesting context from Derrick Everett.
8. Wozzeck, dir. Joachim Hess (1972)
Some context from operaramblings.
From the linked blog post:
“In any event there is some really good cinematography. Very effective use is made of atmospheric long shots, especially during the orchestral interludes, but mostly the singers are filmed in close up with the camera typically lingering for a long time on the same shot. It really reinforces the creepiness and is far more effective than cutting to a new angle every two seconds.
MS Fragments:
Effectively deals with feelings of claustrophobia and containment.
Restraint in editing.
Musical cinematography
9. Don Giovanni, dir. Joseph Losey (1979)
A review from Judith Martin at the time of release. I found this to be rather prescient re: our current moment.
“Loving opera does not necessarily lead to loving filmed opera, in the movies or on television, no matter how excellent the credentials of those making the film. By its nature, filmed opera uses mechanically reproduced sound and it subjects broad theatrical conventions to the literal scrutiny of the camera.
So your true opera fan will usually concede, at most, that an opera movie is only better than no opera, and perhaps a useful way of introducing the form to people who will then go and support the real thing.”
A v. serious critical unpacking (not my style, but notable for its intensity) by Colin Gardner
MS fragments:
This is useful to watch because Losey really points to an interpretation.
AND FINALLY!
These are films that constitute the “post golden age”. They are, on the whole, less experimental and weird. With the exception of Death of Klinghoffer, they are standard rep. Maybe now films will only get made based on superstar power. I bet someone would put real money into another Netrebko film.
10. The Death of Klinghoffer, dir. Penny Woolcock (2003)
From Penny Woolcock’s essay on the film:
We had more luck before we started. The budget for the Death of Klinghoffer was 2.5 million pounds, huge for television at that time and unheard of for an arts film. Jan was surprised when it was quickly nodded through the budget round. She popped in to see Tim Gardam, at that time Director of Programmes. “You approved The Death of Klinghoffer?” “Yeah”, he replied. “It’s great.” Jan was relieved. Months later when we were in the middle of the shoot Tim came into her office and saw a panoramic picture of our cruise liner. “What the hell is that?” “It’s our boat!” beamed Jan. “Isn’t it great?” Tim hit the roof. It turned out that he had misread the figures and thought he was approving a budget of £250,000 not £2.5 million.
That is a lot of money but given what we were trying to do it was peanuts. We restaged the war over the foundation of the state of Israel, recorded the LSO at Abbey Road Studios, sailed around the Med with a large cast and a bunch of opera singers any one of whom could have got a sore throat and so on and on. We could only squeak through if every single thing went right, every single day. We had to get what they call a bond for the film – it’s a kind of insurance. Without it the filming would not go ahead.
ALSO! Her essay on filmmaking is worthwhile.
MS Fragments
Blend of contemporary music and docudrama suggests an interesting kind of hybrid form.
I’ve never found this to be the most successful score and this film doesn’t convince me otherwise.
Made-for-TV is safer for opera bc of distribution. Multiple entities don’t have to agree that opera is a worthwhile thing to put on film, economically speaking..
11. La Boheme, dir. Robert Dornhelm (2008)
Opening of Anna Picard’s review of the film for Independent.
Can grand opera ever work at the movies? As shorthand for passion, obsession or sophistication, it has played a useful supporting role in everything from art house to horror.
Sung by Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, lampooned by the Marx Brothers and Danny Kaye, it has proved a great subject for comedy. Yet with the exception of Ingmar Bergman's jewel-box film of The Magic Flute, and the offbeat extrapolations of Derek Jarman, Nicolas Roeg, Robert Altman, Ken Russell, Bruce Beresford and Jean-Luc Godard in Don Boyd's Aria, opera has almost always looked false on film.
It's curious that two art forms so adept at enchantment have failed to form a stronger relationship. One hundred and 16 years ago, Thomas Edison predicted that synchronised sound and vision would bring opera to a man's parlour. And Edison was partly right. We now have some astonishing records of staged productions on DVD. But imagine an Almodovar L'Heure espagnole, a Brothers Quay Fairy Queen, a Terence Davies Eugene Onegin, a Scorsese Fanciulla del West. Though Woody Allen, Abbas Kiarostami and Sofia Coppola are directing operas, they're not directing them for the cinema. Whether flirting with real time and real locations (Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's 1992 Tosca), juxtaposing footage of the recording sessions with live action (Benoît Jacquot's 2001 Tosca) or sprinkling Mozart with CGI (Kenneth Branagh's 2006 The Magic Flute), opera on film has progressed remarkably little since Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni (1979).
MS fragments
Star vehicle. Not much more.
Made me miss Rolando Villazón in his glory days.
Netrebko gets more ferocious by the day.
12. The Magic Flute, dir. Kenneth Branagh (2006)
From Peter Conrad’s review of the film
The script's comment is terse: 'Confirmation of an indifferent universe.' Modernising The Magic Flute, Branagh forces it to confront an existential absurdity that Mozart knew nothing about. Sarastro's field hospital is said to be 'like a lunatic asylum designed by Dali and Kafka'. On one of its beds I noticed an extra, cast as a wounded soldier, lying down to rest. He was legless, and had parked his detachable pins by the bedside. I wondered how he'd managed the trick. Then when he got up and reassembled himself for the next take, I saw that he was an actual double amputee. Some losses cannot be repaired, by magic or by music. Even so, Branagh's final image - to be filled in by computer graphics - will hark back to the rational 18th century, when music symbolised harmony and promised to restore paradise. As the last chords die away, the flute twirls weightlessly in mid-air, turned to radiant gold by the sun. It may be too late for Mozart to save our hell-bent world. Even so, it's pleasing to think that, thanks to Voyager, The Magic Flute may one day entertain the angels, or convert extra-terrestrials to opera.
MS fragments
Hey! I’m here for it!
Way, way, way too many ideas here, but many of them work for me.
I appreciate the attempt at engagement and invention, even if it doesn’t cohere. In the spirit of the piece itself.
13. Madame Butterfly, dir. Frédéric Mitterrand (1995)
From the Roger Ebert review.
This beautiful new film version of “Madame Butterfly” is not a revisionist approach; it films Puccini's opera more or less as it was intended to be seen, and of course that is what we want (I am not looking forward to the Baz Luhrmann version, with Pinkerton as the leader of a motorcycle gang, and Butterfly as the daughter of a Korean grocer in the Bronx). The approach is traditional, the pace is attentive, and yet the emotion is still all there, and when Pinkerton's carriage comes rolling up with his new family inside, my blood boils
DID YOU MAKE IT DOWN HERE? There are many, many more films out there. But at this point, you should already be well seasoned. And if you need anything else, hopefully you can find it in the links and articles above. Happy watching / making!
