A Wagner documentary without Howard Goodall or Stephen Fry? Yes, it can be done.
Here's the earliest effort: Carl Fröhlich's 1913 silent movie The Life and Works of Richard Wagner. The series of reverential vignettes was put together to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth.
Ideally it would have been accompanied by an orchestra playing Wagner's music at each showing, but the makers didn't want to stump up the required royalties. So they commissioned Giuseppe Becce to craft a Wagner-like score; close enough to sound like the real thing, but different enough to avoid legal retaliation. Becce bore such an uncanny resemblance to Wagner that he was drafted in to act the part of the composer as well.
There's no sound on the video above, so feel free to slam on some Daft Punk.
On Saturday night, madrileños can release the ants from their collective pants as one of the most hotly anticipated and secretively conceived productions in the whole of operaland will be unveiled.
Michael Haneke’s new Così fan tutte at the Teatro Real in Madrid follows his highly-praised operatic debut with Don Giovanni in Paris. Production details are a closely-guarded secret, with all participants sworn to silence. All the outside world knows is that Haneke has spent up to 10 hours a day with the singers and created some non-singing parts.
But the director himself won’t be on stage to collect the cheers and boos. Instead, he’ll be thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, where on Sunday night he (and we) will see how many of his five nominations for Amour turn into Oscars. Anticipating a backlash from testy operagoers, Haneke has already sat down with Gerard Mortier to prepare a statement explaining his absence.
Did you catch A Late Quartet at the cinema? The titular string quartet's lives start to fall apart when second violinist Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffmann) decides his foxy jogging partner is better company than his iPod.
To mark the DVD release, a series of classical playlists has been put together. Inspired by Hoffmann's character, one is a suggested jogging soundtrack. It's not exactly full of surprises (1812 Overture, Sabre Dance, O Fortuna, etc) but if you're in search of an orchestral accompaniment for your physical activity, it's not a bad place to start.
And if you're not quite sure what a second violinist actually does, let Mr Hoffmann explain it to you in the clip above.
I mentioned in the post about new movie Quartet (below)Il Bacio di Tosca (Tosca's Kiss). The subject of the 1984 documentary is the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti
of Milan, the world's first nursing home for retired opera singers,
founded by Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. And here it is, in full, courtesy of YouTube.
The film follows retired
soprano Sara Scuderi and the other tenants of the retirement home (such
as Giuseppe Manacchini, Leonida Bellon, Salvatore Locapo, and Giovanni
Puligheddu), as they re-live and re-enact the roles which made them
famous. It's in Italian, without subtitles, but it shouldn't be too hard to follow.
Will Quartet do for opera what Black Swan did for ballet?
Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut is a genteel comedy based on Ronald Harwood's 1999 play. Set in a retirement home for musicians, the slight tale revolves around a group of superannuated opera singers.
Essential viewing for anyone interested in Wagner performance practice, it's not a point-and-shoot record of a theatrical performance. Instead Syberberg made a film with actors and fitted it (deliberately loosely) to a pre-recorded soundtrack.
Musically speaking, it's not particularly strong, but cinematically it's arguably the greatest opera film ever made - certainly the most ambitious. Syberberg's visual style and his exploration of the opera's historical and biographical context have proved profoundly influential on later generations of opera directors. Perhaps the most notable of these is Stefan Herheim, whose Bayreuth Parsifalwill be shown live in cinemas (German-speaking countries only) on the same day. If you can see both (lucky you), then do.
Who'll be telling Renee Fleming what to do with her hands in her final Covent Garden performance?
The most intriguing rumour circulated in this month's Opera magazine is that Christoph Waltz is to direct a new Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House in 2016-17, where Renee will play the Marschallin in her Covent Garden farewell.
The Oscar-winning star of Inglourious Basterds doesn't appear to have directed anything before, apart from an obscure TV movie. But he studied singing and opera in his native Vienna before turning to acting, and he's a keen operagoer.
Years before his Oscar, Waltz proved himself as the finest of actors with a guest appearance in the finest of Austrian TV series, Kommissar Rex. His role as an evil doll-maker who dresses up women and moulds them to his will can only help with his Renee-wrangling. Watch him in the clip above, and check out the one below if you want to know how it ends (and catch a glimpse of Rex).
The Institut français in South Kensington is to screen two operas from the Aix-en-Provence festival live in their purpose built cinema, aka the Ciné lumière.
Le nozze di Figaro is at 8.30pm on Thursday 12 July. George Benjamin's new opera Written on Skin, which receives its world premiere at Aix, is at 4pm on Saturday 14 July.
Both are priced at £15, with various concessions available.
As far as I know, this will be the only opportunity to see these shows in the UK. It's possible that festival sponsors Arte TV may stream either or both online, but nothing has been announced yet.
The Opéra national de Paris has signed a deal to show five operas and three ballets live in cinemas next season. The operas in question are Les Contes d'Hoffmann (above), Carmen, Falstaff, Hänsel und Gretel and La Gioconda.
The deal covers 26 UGC screens in France and Belgium. It's not clear whether broader international distribution is on the cards, though it would of course make financial sense to get the operas in as many cinemas as possible. Like other opera houses, including the ROH, Paris Opera's choices will be limited by the Metropolitan Opera's standard terms, which ban any cinema that screens Met offerings from showing any other opera house's work.
The Bayreuth Festival plans to broadcast opera live to cinemas, Katharina Wagner has said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag. Over a hundred German movie houses are included in the plans, and there are discussions with cinemas in Switzerland, Austria and (yay!) Great Britain too.
The first broadcast will be Stefan Herheim's Parsifal on 11 August, accompanied by a break feature with Klaus Florian Vogt and Katharina Wagner. She expects tickets to cost €27-32.
Check it out above! Roberto Alagna hits the big screen on 9 November in a new film by Jean-Louis Guillermou. Celles qui aimaient Wagner blends contemporary and historical narrative to recount episodes from Richard Wagner's life story through the eyes of a modern day fan.
Set The Piano Stool on Fire is is what the legendary Alfred Brendel told Kit Armstrong to coax a sizzling performance from his young protege. It's also the title of a new film exploring their relationship which opens tomorrow, 4 June, at the Curzon Mayfair.
Can't get to the cinema? The film will also be available from 4 June on Curzon On Demand, a new service which streams recent Curzon offerings online for £4 a pop.
Terry Gilliam may well be the first movie director to approach the Faust story in operatic form, but there are a surprisingly large number who've tackled it on film. Did that play into Gilliam's selection of La damnation de Faust over all the other operas he could have chosen to direct, I wonder?
Anna Netrebko makes her role debut in and as Anna Bolena at the Vienna State Opera on 2 April. Evelino Pidò conducts and the cast also includes Elina Garanca, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo and Elisabeth Kulman. Eric Génovèse directs, with costumes by Sofas'R'Us.
It's not often that ENO gets its marketing right but - praise where praise is due - it did a great job with last night's showing of the operatically-inclined 1981 cult movie Diva. Presented by the Secret Cinema folk, the movie was prefaced in usual Secret Cinema style with a few scenes acted out in the bars by suitably costumed actors.
More importantly, it was a showcase for the talents of Elizabeth Llewellyn, a soprano bearing a passing physical resemblance to the titular diva, Wilhelmenia Fernandez. For ten minutes and with just a piano in support, Elizabeth held an audience of restless moviegoers silent and spellbound with no more than the arresting emotional resonance of her voice. The movie is all style, but Elizabeth has real substance too what an advertisement for ENO.
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