The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) screens five classic opera films in the September Panorama film series, Playing to the Rafters: Opera on Film, including The Magic Flute, Tosca, La Traviata, Moses and Aaron, and The Pirates of Penzance.
While live HD transmissions of Metropolitan Opera performances have lured opera buffs to movie theatres in big numbers, these operas are still stage productions that can not match the size and scope of opera performances conceived and realized for the cinema.
The September films series also includes the Cleveland premiere of two silent epics from French filmmaker Abel Gance. J’accuse and La Roue, two innovative and influential epics during the silent era, have rarely been seen in their original form. For decades they existed in multiple versions of varying lengths, most without English intertitles. Now Lobster Films Studios in Paris, in collaboration with U.S. DVD label Flicker Alley, Film Preservation Associates, the Netherlands Filmmuseum, and other international film archives, has assembled the most complete versions of both epics to date, featuring digital restorations with English translations and new symphonic scores composed by Robert Israel. Gance is best known for his 1928 spectacle Napoleon, and for those who appreciate film, J’accuse and La Roue will surprise and delight.
Films will be shown in the CMA Lecture Hall located at 11150 East Boulevard in University Circle. Admission prices to museum films, excluding La Roue, are: general public $8, CMA members $6, seniors 65 & over $5, students $4, or one Panorama voucher. Panorama Film Series vouchers (in books of 10) cost $55 for the general public, $45 for CMA members. The admission price for La Roue is general public $10, CMA members, seniors 65 & over and students $8.
Playing to the Rafters: Opera on Film
The Magic Flute - Friday, September 5, 6:30 p.m., Sunday, September 7, 1:30 p.m.
Directed by Ingmar Bergman, with Hakan Hagegard. 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, sung in Swedish, is leavened by love songs and low comedy. (Sweden, 1975, color, subtitles, 35mm, 135 min.)
Tosca - Wednesday, September 10, 6:30 p.m.
Directed by Benoit Jacquot, with Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, and Ruggero Raimondi. In Giacomo Puccini’s popular melodrama, a corrupt baron schemes to compromise a singer in love with a painter. (Italy/France/Britain/Germany, 2001, color/b&w, subtitles, 35mm, 126 min.)
La Traviata - Friday, September 12, 6:45 p.m., Sunday, September 14, 1:30 p.m.
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, with Teresa Stratas and Placido Domingo. This sumptuous version of Giuseppi 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 p.m.
Directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet. This minimalist, mesmerizing version of Arnold Schonberg’s Biblical opera was shot in a Roman amphitheatre 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 p.m., Sunday, September 28, 1:30 p.m.
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 based on Joseph Papp’s acclaimed Broadway production. (Britain/USA, 1983, color, 35mm, 112 min.)
Abel Gance: Two Silent Epics - J’accuse (I Accuse) - Friday, September 19, 6:15 p.m., Wednesday, September 24, 6:15 p.m.
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 p.m.
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 years before 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. -- www.clevelandart.org
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