I first saw Carmen (the film version) when I was twelve or thirteen and the great impression it left on me was that you could have hairy armpits and still be totally smokin'. When I revisited it many years later, it was still equally satisfying to see those tufts under Julia Migenes-Johnson's (toned, tanned) arm, and I really enjoyed the singing too.
It was filmed on location in Spain in 1984 with Placido Domingo (also looking super-hot, I might add) as Don Jose, but it's Julia who steals the show. The urban legend is that after she'd been cast, Migenes took the score to her singing teacher who looked at her wryly and said, "We have a lot of work to do." And work she did - for months before hitting the recording studio. On the screen, she is a triumph. She is truly the sexiest Carmen I've ever seen. I've seen some very bad, very self-conscious Carmens "acting" sexy which often, sadly, comes across as totally trashy. The men should all come crawling on hands and knees to her, not the other way round. It's also a pet hate of mine when Carmens who can't dance are forced by the director onto a table top to do a flamenco and wind up looking like they're on a polo field stomping the divets.
Just as English teachers let us watch Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet to lure us into study for the Shakespeare exam, music teachers used to pop on film versions of operas to attract our attention. Obviously I was the geek who got there early to sit in the front row. Mirella Freni in La Boheme in 1965 is totally adorable (that sounds like such a patronising thing to say about Freni, but she is!) I remember really enjoying Kenneth Branagh's 2006 Magic Flute (he wrote the English lyrics himself), especially the Queen of the Night, and went home immediately to try out the top notes. Purists will tell you to watch Ingmar Bergman's version.
It's pretty hard not to rather love the 1983 La Traviata starring Teresa Stratas and Luciano Pavarotti. At 109 minutes long, yes, director Franco Zeffirelli performed a minor amputation on Verdi's score, and this sort of thing always upsets somebody. But everything else is pretty flawless - the dazzling, sumptuous sets and costumes, the divine Stratas and the full-bodied gloriousness that is Pav.
Sadly, there hasn't been anything in the opera-to-film genre in about 20 years (bar Branagh's Flute). The 70's and 80's were really the hey-day of opera on screen and then for some reason, it all kind of stopped. Some would say the same about musicals on film. True musical buffs will tell there was nothing decent after Cabaret in 1972 (cough, cough, Grease?). Despite the "revival" that musicals have had in the past decade or so with the likes of Chicago, Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Sweeney Todd and most recently Les Miserables, you won't see any of these films make it onto critics' top 100. I know - Anne Hathaway shaved her head and everything! (She got the Oscar, she's fine.) Fact is, for most of today's movie-goers, there's something just doesn't sit right about people bursting into song. Unless it's a Disney movie.
While we can expect to see more musicals make it to film in the coming years (e.g. Sondheim's Into The Woods currently in production), whether anyone's game enough to give it a go with opera - it's sad to admit but there probably just isn't the audience for it now. The musicals rely on big names who can hold a tune (this is unfair, Hugh Jackman can more than hold a tune) but opera singers don't cause a ruckus at the mainstream box office. I'm now having horror fantasies of Magic Flute in 3D with Justin Bieber as Tamino and Tim Curry in drag as the Queen (he'd be amazing - how old is he now?)
Furthermore, in it's entirety, an opera is bloody long. Sometimes even longer than The Hobbit (which was way too long). You can't blame Zeffirelli for his cuts. How are you supposed to keep a movie audience interested for over three hours, when a lot of what's happening is fairly repetitive ("but I thought Mimi already died? Wasn't that her big dying aria? Did she just WAKE UP AGAIN and SING SOME MORE?") and the plots are, for the most part, thin on the ground?
Secondly, for me, part of the thrill of opera is the terrifying fact that it's live. Anything could happen! We're bracing ourselves in anticipation of Calaf's top B flat and whether or not Tosca is going to come flying back over the battlements because her landing trampoline was too springy. When everything is recorded perfectly in a studio, we lose that realness, our human connection to the singers who are also, believe it or not, human.
So you can imagine how excited the opera world was when the Met started broadcasting "live". They started small in 2006 and now broadcast to 60 countries, including NZ. We get the HD and all the fancy camera angles (close-ups of the singers' faces! A revelation! Spot who can really act!) that you get from a film, not to mention the comfy armchair seats and snacks, and the singing comes to you exactly as it should be: live and raw and open for criticism! For those of us tucked away in a wee corner of the globe it is such a treat to be transported for 3 - 5 hours to New York, with Renee Fleming as our tour guide.
I really can't recommend these screenings enough. Check out what is on in your area and grab your nearest and dearest opera virgins - it's a great way to ease them into it - plying them with popcorn and Puccini.
It was filmed on location in Spain in 1984 with Placido Domingo (also looking super-hot, I might add) as Don Jose, but it's Julia who steals the show. The urban legend is that after she'd been cast, Migenes took the score to her singing teacher who looked at her wryly and said, "We have a lot of work to do." And work she did - for months before hitting the recording studio. On the screen, she is a triumph. She is truly the sexiest Carmen I've ever seen. I've seen some very bad, very self-conscious Carmens "acting" sexy which often, sadly, comes across as totally trashy. The men should all come crawling on hands and knees to her, not the other way round. It's also a pet hate of mine when Carmens who can't dance are forced by the director onto a table top to do a flamenco and wind up looking like they're on a polo field stomping the divets.
Just as English teachers let us watch Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet to lure us into study for the Shakespeare exam, music teachers used to pop on film versions of operas to attract our attention. Obviously I was the geek who got there early to sit in the front row. Mirella Freni in La Boheme in 1965 is totally adorable (that sounds like such a patronising thing to say about Freni, but she is!) I remember really enjoying Kenneth Branagh's 2006 Magic Flute (he wrote the English lyrics himself), especially the Queen of the Night, and went home immediately to try out the top notes. Purists will tell you to watch Ingmar Bergman's version.
It's pretty hard not to rather love the 1983 La Traviata starring Teresa Stratas and Luciano Pavarotti. At 109 minutes long, yes, director Franco Zeffirelli performed a minor amputation on Verdi's score, and this sort of thing always upsets somebody. But everything else is pretty flawless - the dazzling, sumptuous sets and costumes, the divine Stratas and the full-bodied gloriousness that is Pav.
Sadly, there hasn't been anything in the opera-to-film genre in about 20 years (bar Branagh's Flute). The 70's and 80's were really the hey-day of opera on screen and then for some reason, it all kind of stopped. Some would say the same about musicals on film. True musical buffs will tell there was nothing decent after Cabaret in 1972 (cough, cough, Grease?). Despite the "revival" that musicals have had in the past decade or so with the likes of Chicago, Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Sweeney Todd and most recently Les Miserables, you won't see any of these films make it onto critics' top 100. I know - Anne Hathaway shaved her head and everything! (She got the Oscar, she's fine.) Fact is, for most of today's movie-goers, there's something just doesn't sit right about people bursting into song. Unless it's a Disney movie.
While we can expect to see more musicals make it to film in the coming years (e.g. Sondheim's Into The Woods currently in production), whether anyone's game enough to give it a go with opera - it's sad to admit but there probably just isn't the audience for it now. The musicals rely on big names who can hold a tune (this is unfair, Hugh Jackman can more than hold a tune) but opera singers don't cause a ruckus at the mainstream box office. I'm now having horror fantasies of Magic Flute in 3D with Justin Bieber as Tamino and Tim Curry in drag as the Queen (he'd be amazing - how old is he now?)
Furthermore, in it's entirety, an opera is bloody long. Sometimes even longer than The Hobbit (which was way too long). You can't blame Zeffirelli for his cuts. How are you supposed to keep a movie audience interested for over three hours, when a lot of what's happening is fairly repetitive ("but I thought Mimi already died? Wasn't that her big dying aria? Did she just WAKE UP AGAIN and SING SOME MORE?") and the plots are, for the most part, thin on the ground?
Secondly, for me, part of the thrill of opera is the terrifying fact that it's live. Anything could happen! We're bracing ourselves in anticipation of Calaf's top B flat and whether or not Tosca is going to come flying back over the battlements because her landing trampoline was too springy. When everything is recorded perfectly in a studio, we lose that realness, our human connection to the singers who are also, believe it or not, human.
So you can imagine how excited the opera world was when the Met started broadcasting "live". They started small in 2006 and now broadcast to 60 countries, including NZ. We get the HD and all the fancy camera angles (close-ups of the singers' faces! A revelation! Spot who can really act!) that you get from a film, not to mention the comfy armchair seats and snacks, and the singing comes to you exactly as it should be: live and raw and open for criticism! For those of us tucked away in a wee corner of the globe it is such a treat to be transported for 3 - 5 hours to New York, with Renee Fleming as our tour guide.
I really can't recommend these screenings enough. Check out what is on in your area and grab your nearest and dearest opera virgins - it's a great way to ease them into it - plying them with popcorn and Puccini.