Picking up from where we had left off, today's post reflects my continued reassessment of the past and current state of the so-called "entertainment" industry - that is, the various cinematic and/or operatic "treasures" that have been placed out there for one's viewing and listening pleasure.
"Adriana Lecouvreur"This minor verismo work - a potboiler supreme yet quite popular in its day - from the lesser hand of Italian composer Francesco Cilèa, has been infrequently revived around the world's stages. Still, the Metropolitan Opera has, on occasion, given a boost to this tuneful item when the opportunity has arisen to showcase a worthy artist or two.
In the Met Opera's case, when Russian diva Anna Netrebko met Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili, the fireworks and sparks flew at a fast clip, so much so that the work finally took off. The opera itself takes a sort of Dangerous Liaisons approach to the rivalry between disparate elements, since nothing makes much sense in this lavish costume drama.
The plot: two jealous women, i.e., two Toscas (the envious Adriana and the equally scorching Princess di Bouillon) to one Cavaradossi-like lover (Maurizio, sung by Polish tenor Piotr Beczala), are rivals, with both ladies likewise attracted to and enamored of the tenor who happens to be a bogus Count of Saxony but, in reality, is a Polish aristocrat in league with the Queen of France!
The entire premise is nothing short of nonsense and wordplay. Nevertheless, it's all very much in the vein of both Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier, another popular verismo piece, and his Fedora, but without those operas' musical invention. That the artists participating in this hokum can bring an overdone roast to a boil is a tribute to their versatility and talent. It's always worth a fair hearing; but truth be told Adriana, for all its good intentions, remains a soapy sudser of a piece.
The lone redeeming factor in this patently pseudo-drama, the lovesick manager of a provincial acting troupe named Michonnet, was poignantly sung and rivetingly acted by the large-scaled Italian baritone Ambrogio Maestri. Bravo, maestro Maestri!
There appears to be a similarity between certain thematic airs and passages in Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini and the opening Sailor's Song from Act I of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. It's a winnowing melody that both anticipates the doomed Francesca and her illicit lover Paolo's longing for one another and the pause at the climax of the Act II battle scene in Francesca.
Of course, this similarity in textual and musical matters permeates the entirety of Zandonai's operone, or his "big opera." The forbidden love between Paolo il Bello ("The Handsome") and the lovely Francesca is juxtaposed against the raging medieval war elements and, at its height, the boisterous entry of Giovanni Malatesta, or Gianciotto the Lame, i.e., Paolo's brutish, hotheaded brother.
There's another troublesome character, an ugly and deformed third brother: the one-eyed Malatestino (a high tenor), a vicious, bloodthirsty dolt who lusts after his beautiful sister-in-law in equal measure to that of his siblings.
A veritable blood and guts drama (reminiscent in places of a roadshow production of Game of Thrones), nothing in Tito Ricordi's rather verbose libretto (he was the son of renowned Italian music publisher Giulio Ricordi) matched the spark of inspiration that would have attracted Giacomo Puccini to this sordid subject. In fact, Puccini hated the story and detested its source even more: a wordy four-act play by the pompous Italian poet and playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio, a tiny little man who the composer often referred to as a "pipsqueak."
Puccini eventually turned to something completely foreign to his nature: Turandot, a fantasy fairy-tale by Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi. This would become the Italian melodist's final effort for the Italian operatic stage - and what a work it would become! But that was decades after its composer had passed on. Even the likes of Maria Jeritza and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, two of the most famous past exponents of the parts of Princess Turandot and Prince Calaf, could not possibly have anticipated the stir that subsequent performers, such as Birgit Nilson and Franco Corelli, or superstar tenor Luciano Pavarotti, would bring to the fore.
Even so, in 1926, two years after his passing, Puccini's final stage subject was completed by a minor artist, one Franco Alfano, with further adjustments and alterations by none other than conductor Arturo Toscanini. The late composer himself had hoped that Zandonai - the musical brains behind Francesca da Rim ini - would complete the project, or quite possibly Viennese operetta king, Franz Lehár, a friend and admirer of Puccini's oeuvre. Neither artist took the bait.
Close Encounters remains a profoundly moving, film-watching experience - a near-religious one, if you think about it. Steven Spielberg's early masterpiece served as a wake-up call to those yearning for a reminder that something big, something fascinating and earth-shattering, anything, might truly be "out there" - just beyond our reach, yet close enough for us to touch and be touched by.
The ubiquitous Pinocchio angle is prevalent throughout. To be frank, the lead character Roy Neary is "closer" to his dream than he realizes: the dream of finding something far beyond mere human understanding. At the start, Roy wants to take his family to see Disney's classic cartoon, Pinocchio, about a little wooden puppet who longs to be a real boy. In the background, however, the television set is tuned to producer-director Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments, an indication to viewers that something truly spellbinding is about to take shape.
On a deeper philosophical level, it's about believing in one's dreams of a different, perhaps better, more fulfilling life (in Roy's case, of having a true purpose). Unfortunately, at the start Roy misses out on both, as he's called into "active duty" to investigate a major power outage in his area.
What he faces instead are saucers (both flying and otherwise), bright lights flickering on and off, along with power surges and power shortages - but who's controlling these phenomena? Us or "Them"? Are things really getting out of hand? And what is the ultimate purpose for all these strange happenings?
A five-note theme recurs throughout the film, in varying contexts and permutations. In essence, it's one of those musical earworms, ever-present and forever sounding the theme of universal harmony and understanding. So the question is raised: why not communicate through music? There's no spoken language involved, and thus no basis for misinterpretation, which the film successfully transmits.
Another theme - four bar notes repeated endlessly - represent the military and the many car chase sequences that abound (a prominent feature of 1960s and '70s films). Who are these men chasing anyway? What's the rush? Why is Roy following? Where is he going? More importantly, where is the audience being taken? A thrill a minute, a rollercoaster ride. That's the essential thrust of the picture, of both knowing and not knowing where the story is going or where it is taking us.
The last fifteen or so minutes of this film will both uplift and inspire you. And, of course, there's John Williams' passionately laden musical score (a trial run for his masterful score for E.T.: The Extraterrestrial), a certifiable classic of its kind, to take audiences on the ride of their lives.
"The Book of Eli" (2010)Who is that oxygen-masked man? This action film starts off nondescriptly. A horrible accident has enveloped the Earth - and the viewer in particular. Buoyed by an exceptional one-of-a-kind film score, courtesy of Atticus Ross, this post-apocalyptic, pseudo-Western-style adventure flick (which owes much to those Italian-made spaghetti Westerns) stars Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, and Jennifer Beals, with fascinating "one-off" cameos by Tom Waits and Malcolm McDowell.
"Blade Runner 2049" (2017)
What comes to mind is the character of Rachel, from the Old Testament - who weeps for her children? Every scene in this Denis Villeneuve sequel reflects (and even meditates on) what has previously transpired in Ridley Scott's original 1982 film. Blade Runner 2049 serves as both a commentary on and expansion of the original film treatment, with echoes of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist embedded within its framework.
Indeed, the themes of family and parentage - who is worthy enough or not of falling in love - are sounded at every turn, in addition to abandonment, being lost and then found, and of reflections upon one's origins. Still, a dark future is predicted for humankind, once the ever-present replicants begin to "take over."
Based on author Henry James' 1880 novel Washington Square, the film version was retitled The Heiress after Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1947 stage adaptation. Starring Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper, Montgomery Clift as would-be suitor Morris Townsend, Ralph Richardson as Catherine's father Dr. Austin Sloper, and Miriam Hopkins as Catherine's busybody Aunt Lavinia Penniman, the film was directed by William Wyler, with a score by Aaron Copland.
The original Broadway stage production featured Wendy Hiller and Basil Rathbone as Catherine and Dr. Sloper, respectively, while the London edition had Peggy Ashcroft and Ralph Richardson in the principal parts.
In the Oscar-winning screen version, Catherine transforms herself from a mincingly shy, plain-Jane, ugly-duckling type to a calculating Miss Havisham-wannabe (from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations), with aspects of Regina Giddens' scheming disposition from Lillian Hellman's 1939 stage play The Little Foxes, a tour de force for Tallulah Bankhead, and subsequent 1941 movie version, also directed by Wyler but with Bette Davis as Regina.
The sole heir to both her late mother and deceased father's estates, a now "wounded but wiser" Catherine can finally lead a life of celibacy, fighting off any and all comers, not to mention frequent suitors for her hand in marriage. Any man daring to approach this victim of circumstance will be treated as a fortune hunter. She's a Turandot in the making, with enough steely-eyed reserve to take her father's place as the resident curmudgeon of Washington Square Park.
Catherine has learned to become what her father had always wanted her to become, albeit subliminally: as spiteful and cruel an individual as he had been, at war with life and the world around her. In Henry James' original, the story is not only about Dr. Sloper and his daughter but about a time and a place, i.e., New York society at the midpoint of the 19 th century; the mores and standards of conduct relative to period and location, in this instance Lower Manhattan.
The Broadway play, retitled The Heiress, concentrated its narrative around the character dynamic between Catherine and her scheming suitor Morris, in opposition to Catherine's stern, unloving and disapproving father. No doubt Sloper blamed his daughter for his wife's death in childbirth (there are other aspects in the novel not covered by either play or screenplay). Dr. Sloper was right, of course, about Morris. But that wasn't the point: if we want our children to grow and mature as adults, we must let them make their own choices and learn from their mistakes.
Sadly, Catherine was never given the opportunity to find her own way in the world - that is, not until her father's passing. Which is why both the play and the film's title, The Heiress, makes perfect sense. For not only the play but especially for the movie, Catherine, as his sole surviving heir, is the recipient of whatever her father bestowed on her (in the novel, her inheritance is smaller, but enough to suit her purposes).
His wealth, his privilege, and most pertinent of all - Dr. Sloper's harshly critical, highly judgmental and condescending nature - have also been bequeathed. This opinion is based on observation. That final act by Catherine's interfering Aunt Penniman (a name worthy of analysis in itself), ordered by Catherine to bolt the door, lock the windows and, quite specifically, draw the curtains on life and the world beyond, while shutting herself off from pain and hurt and the problems of others, completes the transformation.
Morris' failure to elope with her years earlier, to abandon Catherine to her "fate," parallels a similar episode in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, where the young and innocent Natasha Rostova waits in vain for the dastardly Dolukhov to whisk her off to the chapel; fortunately, disrupted by Pierre Bezukhov's timely intervention.
Ah, yes! The foibles of youth and young love!
"Dark Prince"A proposed screenplay about the early life of famed jazz trumpeter Mile Davis. It would cover his youth in Illinois and East St. Louis, his early manhood in New York City, and then his time in Paris, France, before returning to New York. The film should explore his heroin addiction, his career with Charlie Parker, then Dizzy Gillespie, and his meeting and friendship with Gil Evans in that artist's Manhattan apartment. It would end in 1968, with the start of his electric jazz period and the album Bitches Brew. Dark shades, long hair, stylish dashiki, sour mood and all.
"Marian and Eleanor"A play about the singer Marian Anderson and her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, based on the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) incident and the subsequent Easter Sunday concert before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
"Julie d 'Aubigny"Set in the 1600's, this story follows the Marquis d 'Aubigny, who fell in love with a young, master swordswoman. The tale involved three duels, songs, and opera - a rich tapestry of material suitable for a play, a film, or an opera.
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Once Upon a Time in the West"The harmonica sound in both pictures serves as a harbinger of violence and brutality to come, evoking the image of the angel Gabriel about to blow his horn.
(To be continued....)
Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes