Playing to the Rafters: Opera on Film
Live HD transmissions of Metropolitan Opera performances have lured opera buffs to movie theaters in big numbers. But these beamed-in operas are still stage productions that can’t match the size and scope of opera performances conceived and realized for the cinema. Five classic filmed operas show this month. Each film $8, CMA members $6, seniors 65 & over $5, students $4, or one Panorama voucher.
The Magic Flute
Friday, September 5, 6:30
Sunday, September 7, 1:30
Directed by Ingmar Bergman, with Håkan Hagegård. In one of Bergman’s wittiest and most charming films, a prince sets forth to rescue a princess from a seemingly sinister high priest. The Masonic moralizing in Mozart’s mystical fairytale opera (here sung in Swedish) is leavened by love songs and low comedy. (Sweden, 1975, color, subtitles, 35mm, 135 min.)
Tosca
Wednesday, September 10, 6:30
Directed by Benoit Jacquot, with Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, and Ruggero Raimondi. In
Puccini’s popular melodrama, a corrupt baron schemes to compromise a singer who loves a painter. (Italy/France/Britain/Germany, 2001, color/b&w, subtitles, 35mm, 126 min.)
La Traviata
Friday, September 12, 6:45
Sunday, September 14, 1:30
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, with Teresa Stratas and Plácido
Domingo. This sumptuous version of Verdi’s romantic tragedy about a consumptive, self-sacrificing 19th-century French courtesan is one of the most intoxicating of all opera films. Based on Alexandre Dumas’ The Lady of the Camellias, a.k.a. Camille. (Italy, 1983, color, subtitles, 35mm, 109 min.)
Moses and Aaron
Wednesday, September 17, 7:00
Directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. This minimalist, mesmerizing version of Arnold Schönberg’s biblical opera was shot in a Roman amphitheater in Italy using direct sound. (Austria/France/West Germany/Italy, 1975, color, subtitles, 16mm, 107 min.)
The Pirates of Penzance
Friday, September 26, 6:45
Sunday, September 28, 1:30
Directed by Wilford Leach, with Kevin Kline, Angela Lansbury, and Linda Ronstadt. Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operetta about a band of pirates and a bevy of beauties is given spirited treatment in this movie version of Joseph Papp’s acclaimed Broadway production. (Britain/USA, 1983, color, 35mm, 112 min.)
Abel Gance: Two Silent Epics
Abel Gance (1889–1981), the Promethean French filmmaker best known for his 1928 spectacle Napoléon, made two other equally innovative and influential epics during the silent era, J’accuse (1919) and La Roue (1923). But these two movies have been much harder to see than Napoléon; for decades they existed in multiple versions of varying lengths, most without English intertitles. Now Lobster Films Studios in Paris (working with U.S. DVD label Flicker Alley, Film Preservation Associates, the Netherlands Filmmuseum, and other international film archives) has assembled the most complete versions yet of both epics—digital restorations with English translations and new symphonic scores composed by Robert Israel. Both receive their Cleveland theatrical premiere this month.
J’accuse (I Accuse)
Friday, September 19, 6:15
Wednesday, September 24, 6:15
Directed by Abel Gance. Abel Gance’s first super-production is a galvanizing anti-war drama that was partially shot during actual WWI battles. It follows the fates of two Frenchmen who love the same woman until both are sent off to war. Gance remade the movie as a talkie in 1938, but to lesser effect. (France, 1919, b&w, silent with English subtitles and recorded music, DVD, 150 min.) Admission $8, CMA members, seniors 65 & over, and students $6. No passes or Panorama vouchers.
La Roue (The Wheel)
Sunday, September 21, 12:00 noon
Directed by Abel Gance. Jean Cocteau declared that "there is cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso." Almost four-and-a-half hours long, with rapid cutting and thrilling sequences shot along train tracks high in the French Alps, this electrifying epic tells of a beautiful young woman who is loved by both the old railway engineer who adopted her when she was a child and the engineer’s son, whom she thinks is her brother. (France, 1923, b&w, silent with English intertitles and recorded music, DVD, 263 min.) Special admission $10, CMA members, seniors 65 & over, and students $8. No passes or Panorama vouchers.