New York City Opera and The Film Society of Lincoln Center to Collaborate on Cinematic Opera / Operatic Cinema: Reflections on the Merging of Media, Four-Part Series to Begin on November 2
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(New York, NY, October 13, 2008) Cinematic Opera/Operatic Cinema: Reflections on the Merging of Media, a collaboration between New York City Opera and the Film Society of Lincoln Center that is part of City Opera's Opera Matters program, will be launched on November 2 at 2:00pm with a screening of Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and 2, followed by a talk given by noted British film scholar Ian Christie.
This four-part series, which will be held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, will investigate the affinities between film and opera through the screening of three films; each introduced and followed by a talk and Q&A with an esteemed film expert. The series, programmed by Richard Peña, Program Director at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and Cori Ellison, Dramaturg at New York City Opera, culminates on January 31 in a Plenary Panel Discussion moderated by Richard Peña, with Atom Egoyan, Julie Taymor, and other distinguished directors who have worked in both film and opera.
The relationship between opera and film dates back to the silent-film era, when opera storylines were filmed and distributed with synchronized phonograph records or cues for live musical accompaniment. Since then, these two larger-than-life art forms have had parallel histories, each inspiring artists to find the perfect balance of their components: music, drama, text, movement and visuals. Each has also contributed to the evolution of the other: Opera's scale and abstraction challenge filmmakers to shed the chains of realism, as demonstrated in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's radically minimalist Moses and Aaron. Film lends opera an intimacy and fluidity difficult to achieve onstage, on brilliant display in Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute. Still other filmmakers have merged opera and film to forge a wholly new and fascinating hybrid, as in Sergei Eisenstein's stylized, grandiose Ivan the Terrible, with its visual motifs and imposing Prokofiev score.
Cinematic Opera/Operatic Cinema is part of New York City Opera's program Opera Matters, a series of far-reaching programs that City Opera is presenting throughout New York City in 2008-2009, as its home, the New York State Theater, undergoes an historic renovation. Opera Matters brings together prominent artists, scholars and celebrities from diverse artistic and cultural communities to reveal opera's vital place in today's cultural dialogue. Curated by City Opera's dramaturg Cori Ellison, the series of lively, informal events combining conversation, media, and live music will comprise collaborations highlighting opera's dynamic relationship with other contemporary art forms in partnership with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Paley Center for Media, and the New York Public Library.
Tickets
Single screening tickets for Cinematic Opera/Operatic Cinema are $35; a series pass is $100 and admits one person to all four films. Tickets and passes may be purchased at the Walter Reade Theater box office (cash only) and online at filmlinc.com
A complimentary reception in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery will follow each event.
Calendar Listings
Sunday, November 2, 2008, at 2:00 p.m.
Cinematic Opera / Operatic Cinema: Reflections on the Merging of Media
Presented by New York City Opera and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Ivan the Terrible, Part One / Ivan Groznyy I
Sergei M. Eisenstein, Soviet Union, 1944; 103min.
SCREENING WITH
Ivan the Terrible, Part Two: The Boyars' Plot / Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky zagovor Sergei M. Eisenstein, Soviet Union, 1958; 88 min.
Special guest speaker: Ian Christie, Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at the School of History of Art, Film, and Visual Media at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Overview: Eisenstein's extraordinary collaborations with composer Sergei Prokofiev were in no sense filmed operas, but attempts to bring the stylization of opera to the screen. After the success of Eisenstein and Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, the idea of a film based on the life of the great unifier of Russia appealed to the Soviet authorities, especially Stalin, who counted himself among the Tsar's biggest admirers. Part One begins with Archduke Ivan crowing himself Tsar despite widespread opposition. The film chronicles his marriage to Anastasia, his wars against the Tartars, his near death through illness and finally, in one of the most remarkable scenes ever shot, his return to the throne after a moving appeal from thousands of his subjects. Part Two looks in detail at the Russian court's nobility, the Boyars, as they attempt to unseat Ivan and replace him with the simpleton Vladimir. Part Two-disapproved of by Stalin and not released until after his, Eisenstein's and Prokofiev's deaths-contains a fabulous sequence in color, made with captured German stock. This event will include a ten-minute intermission.
Sunday, December 7, 2008, at 2:00 p.m.
Cinematic Opera / Operatic Cinema: Reflections on the Merging of Media
Presented by New York City Opera and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
The Magic Flute / Trollflöjten
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1975; 135 min.
Special guest speaker: John Simon, longtime theater and film critic for New York magazine and other publications.
Overview: As renowned in his native Sweden for his stage productions as for his films, Bergman had occasionally used Mozart's operas as an undercurrent in his work, so there was tremendous excitement and curiosity to see what he would come up with when he actually committed himself to filming one of them. The result: sheer delight. This tale of Tamino and Papageno's remarkable journey in search of love was filmed on a sound stage in Stockholm's 18th-century Drottningholm Court Theater, filled with beautiful, inventive sets. The singers, especially Håkan Hagegård as Papageno and Birgit Nordin as the Queen of the Night, are uniformly excellent, while Bergman emphasizes the full theatrical experience by integrating the audience's responses and backstage events within the opera itself. In 1976, the National Society of Film Critics gave Ingmar Bergman a special award "for demonstrating how pleasurable opera can be on film." We'd be the last to disagree.
Sunday, January 25, 2009, at 2:00 p.m.
Cinematic Opera / Operatic Cinema: Reflections on the Merging of Media
Presented by New York City Opera and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Moses und Aron / Moses and Aaron
Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Austria/France/West Germany/Italy, 1975; 107 min.
Special guest speaker: David Levin, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago and executive editor of Opera Quarterly.
Overview: Written between 1930 and 1932-right before Arnold Schönberg would be forced into exile from Germany and on the eve of his rediscovery of Judaism-Moses and Aaron follows the two Biblical brothers as they vie for power and influence over the tribes of Israel. For Moses, revelation and faith are enough. Aaron believes the people need something concrete to direct their belief. Schönberg's 12-tone music receives a perfect complement in Straub/Huillet's minimalist direction, as the camerawork becomes the directors' commentary on the oscillating power struggle at the heart of the opera. "Moses and Aaron is both a faithful rendering of Schönberg's opera and an original film in its own right. With the same musicians from the recent Philips recording, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub have succeeded in rendering visible not only the philosophical content of the work-the struggle between word and image-but also its dramatic potential."-13th New York Film Festival.
Saturday January 31, 2009, at 2:00 p.m.
Cinematic Opera / Operatic Cinema: Reflections on the Merging of Media
Presented by New York City Opera and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Plenary Panel Discussion: Directors on Opera and Cinema
Film Society Program Director Richard Peña will moderate a discussion with Atom Egoyan, Julie Taymor and other directors who have brought the worlds of opera and cinema closer together. A complimentary reception in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery will follow each event.
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