New book provides rare look at ‘Opera on Screen’

New book provides rare look at ‘Opera on Screen’

BY DAVID KAPLAN
Rice News Staff

From Ingmar Bergman to the Marx Brothers, opera has given
moviegoers some indelible memories. Until recently, however,
musicologists have devoted little time to the study of opera
on film.

A new book, “Opera on Screen” (Yale University Press), by Marcia Citron, the Lovett Distinguished
Service Professor of Musicology, is the first to lay out
a theoretical overview of opera films and videos from a
musical perspective.

The book is a critical analysis and a historical
survey. Among the ideas Citron explores are how original
works are artistically altered when adapted for the screen,
the relationship between image and sound and how spectators
adapt to the hearing and seeing of opera on the screen as
opposed to the stage.

The idea for the book came out of her teaching.
When she taught graduate opera seminars at the Shepherd
School in the early 1980s, there weren’t many opera
videos, she says. Her students would listen to opera recordings,
which did not allow them to experience the work as a whole.

By the late ’80s, it became more technologically
feasible to make quality videotapes of opera-house performances,
Citron says. More and more film and television productions
of operas also began to appear.

With the benefit of opera videos, Citron
writes in “Opera on Screen,” “We had a sense
of the work as a drama enacted in a specific place, performed
by seen bodies who move, emote and interact with each other.”
And, she notes, “Opera videos soon became more than
representatives of the work. Their interpretations took
on a life of their own.”

Citron considers Bergman’s “The
Magic Flute” to be one of the most well-made films
of opera. Produced in 1976 for Swedish television, the film
provides a psychological insight into a character rarely
seen in stage production, she says.

The turning point in “The Magic Flute”
is when the protagonist, Tamino, realizes the elements of
truth on his path to enlightenment. In the film, Citron
recalls, the camera comes in close to Tamino as the background
goes black, “and it’s almost as if you’re
going into his mind. It’s the sort of thing film can
do but would be very difficult with a stage production,” Citron says.

“Tales of Hoffmann,” made in
1951 by British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger,
is another great cinematic interpretation of opera, according
to Citron. She calls it “a brilliant display of visual
fantasy” through special effects, dance and exaggerated
colors.

“Opera on Screen” continues Citron’s
interest in interdisciplinary topics. She also is the author
of the prize-winning “Gender and the Musical Canon,” to be issued in reprint in November.