Symposium to examine opera, film

Symposium
to examine opera, film

BY JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News staff

Filmmakers have long been attracted to opera, and movie audiences see it on the silver screen in myriad ways — as the main event, such as “Tosca,” to a backdrop for the story, as in the Marx Brother’s “A Night at the Opera,” or a culmination to the narrative, as in “The Godfather III.”

Four musicologists will gather at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music to examine the connections between the two art forms at “The Intersections of Opera and Film,” co-sponsored by the Shepherd School and Rice’s Center for the Study of Cultures.

The centerpiece of the three-day event is a symposium Saturday, April 1, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 1133 Alice Pratt Brown Hall.

“Opera and film have enjoyed a close relationship since the dawn of motion pictures some 100 years ago,” said Marcia Citron, the Martha and Henry Malcolm Lovett Distinguished Service Professor of Musicology and organizer of the symposium. “In the early years, opera was used to legitimize the upstart mass medium. Ever since, opera has infused film in various ways, including the use of operatic music or plots, an operatic style in image or tone and the cinematic fashioning of operas themselves as movies. Conversely, in our visually oriented culture today, film itself is playing an increasingly major role in the ways live opera is conceived and staged.”

Leading music scholars will speak on the relationships between opera and film, including the status of the operatic voice in cinema, the interplay between sound and image, the role of operatic elements in film and the temporal influence of cinema on live opera.

“The goal of the symposium is to explore some of the ways in which the reproduced medium of film engages with the live art form of opera — the ways in which the two media affirm each other, as well as the ways in which they differ and provide opportunities for creative interpretations or social critique,” Citron said.

Extensive film clips will accompany the talks, given by and titled:

• Jeongwon Joe, assistant professor of musicology at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, “Film Divas and the Gendered Dichotomy Between Vocal and Instrumental Music”;

• Michal Grover-Friedlander, musicologist at Tel Aviv University, “‘Callas Forever’: The Afterlife of an Operatic Voice”;

• Citron, “‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ as the Climax of Coppola’s ‘Godfather’ Trilogy”; and

• Helen Greenwald, musicologist at the New England Conservatory of Music, “The Opera That Would be Film: Leonard Bernstein’s ‘A Quiet Place.’”

The two prior evenings will feature screenings at Rice Cinema of films related to the talks. “Callas Forever” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 30, with an introductory talk by Grover-Friedlander and Joe. “The Godfather” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 31, with Citron giving an introductory talk.

The April 1 lectures are free and open to the public. Admission for film screenings March 30 and 31 is $6.

For more information on the symposium, contact Citron at 713-348-3209 or <citr@rice.edu>.