As researcher Jane Matz Mary noted, “Men of the [18th century] aristocracy vied with each other to become the lovers of famous prima donnas.” Even without male suitors, women in 18th century opera were seen as, in anthropologist Vlado Kotnik’s words, “lustful, debauched, and engaged in illicit sexual activities.” As Kotnik explains further, the 18th century conception of the operatic ‘prima donna’ was one laced with potent misogyny, while for men, the ‘castrati’ (male singers castrated before puberty) were seen, at least in 18th century England, as soberly threatening to norms of masculine performativity. During the next century, the opera singer became far less scandalous of a position for both men and women, with technical and artistic mastery bestowing upon many a celebrity-like social standing. Nevertheless, discourse on opera’s moral implications remained a hot topic.

So critical was opera’s ability to openly interrogate, influence, and inspire public discourses on morality that the term ‘Traviata-ism,’ coined by British doctor William Acton, became a Verdi-inspired reference to the prevalence of brothels and sex workers within late-19th century England, while Violetta’s life was personified in the controversial Parisian archetype of the ‘lorette.’ During the ‘long 19th century,’ the greater topic influencing operatic discourses on morals and behaviour was that of ‘Nationalist Romanticism,’ the heyday of Nationalism as a movement, and the creation of national mythoi based on fabricated readings of national histories.

One can look to Glinka, Rossini, Verdi, von Weber, Erkel, Smetana, and Wagner as bastions of what is called ‘musical nationalism,’ though it would be wrong to argue operatic nationalism began in the 19th century. Nevertheless, fast forward to the 21st century, and opera (and operatic commentary) is one of the most vociferous outlets for all things, including and not limited to morals, beliefs, taboos, vices, criticisms, behaviors, and politics. 

But what about the religious commentary on opera and its potential influences on the devout? During the 18th century, the rise of Enlightenment secularism and religious ambivalence allowed for the establishment of secular opera. In places like Rome and Venice this led to opera’s use in events like ‘carnivals.’ Here classes mixed and lusts were fulfilled, no matter how socially ‘immoral.’ Even now, with ‘regietheatre’ performances of highly controversial 20th-century operas like Hindemith’s religiously critical opera “Sancta,” opera is as provocative as ever. Within the cinematic world, there is a film that personifies one shade of opera’s controversiality. Directed by German Jewish immigrant Max Nosseck, in the 1940 Yiddish-language film, ‘“Overture to Glory,” opera becomes the backdrop for many non-operatic issues which, unfortunately, have become more than relevant today.

As Was Then, So Is Now

The film’s story is rather simple. A Jewish cantor of the Vilna Synagogue (the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, once in Vilnius, Lithuania, before being demolished and looted by the Nazis), is tempted away from his faith after finding success as an opera singer with the Warsaw Opera. There are many historical elements here, giving context to the sobriety of pulling away from the faith towards opera, as our Jewish protagonist, in the midst of wartime Lithuania, is drawn to an opera house in Poland.

Opera in Warsaw, Poland—a city boasting the intimidatingly large Grand Theatre—is a very historic tradition dating back to the mid-18th century, with Italian, French, Polish, and German opera creating a cosmopolitan environment. It would be a drastic understatement to say that opera helped Poland recover, both spiritually, emotionally, culturally, and even politically, after the horrors of the Second World War.

As Polish historian Jerzy Miziołek noted, the spectre of late-20th century Communism was the next burden after fascism that Poland had to face.  Nevertheless, opera proved extremely popular. Perhaps surprisingly, “from 1965 to 1970, 25 premieres were given; there were 1,155 performances, seen by a combined audience of more than two million, half of whom were Warsaw residents.” Once the Polish-Russian relationship was formally severed in 1989, Polish operatic cultural infrastructure went through a period of regeneration. One instance during this recovery was the blossoming of the Teatr Narodowy (National Theatre), sharing the same location as the Grand Theatre.

Nosseck had moved to America to flee the rise of Nazism in 1939, and directed under the name of Alexander M. Norris. His film came out in 1940, at a time when Polish opera culture was in a state of dire upheaval under Nazi occupation. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, much of the National Theatre had been destroyed, although classical music performances still occurred, even in the face of Nazi oppression. Wartime Poland had a relatively diverse musical culture, from musical cafes to philharmonic orchestras, even though all were touched and hijacked by Germanic influence. Before 1942 and the beginning of the Final Solution, musical performances by and with Untermensch were accepted to a degree. Afterwards, the dynamic changed completely.

This film can be therefore considered a classical example of pre-1942 Polish musical culture: before the ideological tide turned to its most gruesome chapter. It should be considered accidental that the film was released at a time when antisemitism was on the rise, Polish artistic culture was under duress, and 1940s Stalinist Russia was proving, ironically, to be a more accepting place than America. There are many examples of 1940s American antisemitism. One stark example was the 1943 speech given by Congressman John E. Rankin, inspired by classical racism and laced with foreshadowing of McCarthyism, where he said, 

When those communistic Jews—of whom the decent Jews are ashamed—go around here and hug and kiss these Negroes, dance with them, intermarry with them, and try to force their way into white restaurants, white hotels and white picture shows, they are not deceiving any red-blooded American…they are not deceiving the men in our armed forces—as to who is at the bottom of all this race trouble.

Secular-Sacred Tensions

The star of Nosseck’s film was real-life Russian Jewish cantor Moishe Oysher. Despite antisemitism, Oysher had made a successful career in America from his sacred and secular singing, being praised for his masculine bravado on film and attractive voice. Having sung at the historic First Roumanian-American Congregation in New York City before the synagogue’s eventual destruction, Oysher was one of many high-profile cantors of the wartime and post-war periods, others being Moshe Koussevitzky, the famous operatic tenor Richard Tucker, and Frank Birnbaum. The idea of a cantor being lead astray, away from the faith and into the world of show business, especially during the interwar ‘Golden Age’ of American entertainment culture, was a variation upon a theme that showed up in everything from literature to films.

As James Hoberman observed, the secular-sacred negotiation of the cantor and the synagogue occurred at a time when both the entertainment world and Jewish cantoring were blossoming. Films like “Voices of Israel” (1931) and Yiddish-language ‘talkies’ (speaking films as opposed to silent films) like “Ad Mosay” (1929) collectively speak to the growing tension between male singers who, if they desired, could leave cantoring and make a career for themselves: but their devotion to the faith constrains these desires. For Oysher, as Hoberman notes, his arrival to New York City in 1928, at a time when Yiddish film was entering into its own ‘Golden Age’ and Jews in the American cinematic scene were becoming a growing force, was met with controversy. The Jewish community considered him to have been already led astray.

Not only had he achieved a career in film, if only mildly due to his cold acting, but his return to cantoring had not been as celebrated as he had initially hoped. In 1937, Oysher secured himself as a cantor, but his 1937 film, “The Cantor’s Son,” helped secure his cinematic fame. In 1943, the film’s plot merged with Oysher’s own life, having signed a deal with Italian opera impresario Fortune Gallo of the Chicago Opera Company. This deal was never really fulfilled, as Jeffery Shandler notes. Having been contracted to sing Eleazar in Halévy’s “La Juive” and Canio in Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci,” instead of pursuing opera, Oysher repositioned himself as a Jewish recording artist.

What is fascinating is that another cantor, Yossele Rosenblatt, was also asked by The Chicago Opera to sing Eleazar but said no, even after being championed by Enrico Caruso, because of his faith and his cantoring. This incident is recounted in a 1922 newspaper. In 1954, Oysher returned to cinema but he would pass away four years later. The life of Oysher and the dynamics of pursuing sacred and secular projects simultaneously must have been incredibly difficult, made even more so by negative assessments of Jewish sympathies for Communism within American post-war discourse. In all of this, a great tripartite tension arises: that of devotion to faith versus devotion to art versus devotion to career. Each requires sacrifices specific to the individual.

The film uses opera as a the backdrop for many pressing issues which, for Jews at the start of the Second World War, were heavy on their heart. As the world changes, opera has become a critical form which many opera composers have used to talk about Jewish antisemitism. The choice between one’s faith and a career, one’s faith and safety, one’s faith and freedom are choices many are forced to make everyday, and it is important we remember that, one film at a time.

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It’s no surprise that Richard Wagner’s music is a popular choice for cinematic moments of intense dramaticism, humor, horror, suspense, philosophical gravity, and pleasure. From the many comical moments in the 1957 Warner Bros’ film, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Werner Herzog’s sobering 1992 documentary experience, “Lessons of Darkness,” the endearing 1930 film, “Fire At The Opera,” or the 1950 biofilm about the soprano Nellie Melba, “Melba,” finding Wagner’s music is hardly a needle in the haystack. Instead, it seems the natural step for any film looking to add subtext without lots of heavy lifting getting in the way. That’s where music comes in, a perfect resource!

Unfortunately, the diversity of choices seems, when looking at it in the abstract, thanks to the resources available, hardly diverse at all. As LA Times Jon Burlingame noted in 2010, one of the most famous examples of contemporary cinematic usage of Wagner’s music, specifically the “Ride of the Valkyries” from the eponymously titled second opera of Wagner’s tetradic epic, “Der Ring des Nibelungen” (or The Ring Cycle), is found in the helicopter scene from the 1970 film, “Apocalypse Now.” But what if I told you there are WAY more than one might think, so many in fact that documenting all of them would be impossible for one article alone, let alone a book. 

Instead of going through each, from the most recent (Tár, 2022) to some of the earliest (The Birth of a Nation, 1915), let’s instead look at what music is used, what kinds of films use it, and what it possibly says about the attractiveness of Wagner’s musical-philosophical worldview. It is no surprise that Wagner’s ideals about the world are full of provocative and controversial perspectives and fans, from his anti-Semitism to “total work of art“ (colloquially, Gesamtkunstwerk, although Wagner hated the term), to his laudation by Nazi leaders, the presence of Wagner’s music in a film is hardly neutral but neither can it be considered purposefully political either.

However, the counterargument is the idea of separating the art from the artist, a topic whose central argument is that an artist can have done harmful things but their art stands above or not in opposition to their personal actions. Of course, as one Reddit user noted, “bad people do, however, make good art, and that they do bad things is not a mutually exclusive fact” but “we just can’t separate the art from the artist. This will always be a problem.” What to do, what to do. Can we enjoy Wagner’s music in films and stand aloof from the creator’s personal beliefs? Maybe it doesn’t matter or maybe it matters a lot. As the controversies around J. K. Rowling demonstrate, valuing art does not have to come at the expense of holding its authors accountable. Instead, personal fallibilities add depth to art.

A Tale of (Many, Many) Films

If you take a look at the Wikipedia page entitled, “List of films using the music of Richard Wagner,” you’ll find a lot of very interesting things. First, you’ll notice that most of the films seem to use the same music. Either its the “Ride of the Valkyries,” the glorious prelude to “Tristan und Isolde,” the “Siegfrieds Trauermarsch“ from “Götterdämmerung,” the famous prelude from “Parsifal,” or the overture to “Tannhäuser.” However, on the rare occasion it’s something else, you’ll find less common choices employed like music from Wagner’s early operas like “Rienzi” from 1838 or non-operatic literature like his WWV 103, or the symphonic poem, “Siegried Idyll,” based on the operatic character.

You would then notice that the film’s dates seem noticeably consistent, almost like using Wagner’s music in films is an industry standard as opposed to a creative quirk. There are a few names who repeat on the list, some being the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and German director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. Other than these two, it is a rather eclectic mixture of names, from Americans like D. W. Griffith and Todd Field to more worldy figures like Werner Herzog, Yukio Mishima, Elem Klimov, and Baz Luhrmann. Thus, the attraction to Wagner is hardly located in one country but seems something universal, as if Wagner’s music speaks to themes and topics which strike up relationships with other concepts, from Schopenhauer philosophical pessimism to the law of fate and destiny.

Some of the early 20th-century films like Rouben Mamoulian’s 1930 film, “City Streets,” an altruistic crime drama, Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Nazi propaganda film, “Triumph of the Will,” and Harold French’s 1942 spy lovestory, “Secret Mission,” ironically, all use music from the same opera, “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” One of the earliest films to use “The Ride of the Valkyries” was the 1935 film, “R.A.F.” by Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. Later, in 1936, “Tarzan” writer Edgar Rice Burroughs would try his hand at using the iconic music in his 1936 film, “The Lion Man.” After WWII, one would think Wagner’s music would become more, not less, controversial and used but instead, the opposite happened. After 1945, the use of Wagner’s music in films skyrocketed considerably.

Jean Negulesco, director of “Titanic” (1953), led the charge with his iconic 1946 film, “Humoresque,” followed by iconic films like the 1957 film starring Audrey Hepburn, “Love in the Afternoon,” the 1972 historical drama, “Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King,” and the 1981 Medieval fantasy, “Excalibur,” my personal favorite. During the 2000s, the trend continued but the kinds of films radically diversified. The 2005 film, “The New World,” directed by Terrence Malick could be considered one of the new directions in American cinema’s relationship with Wagner, now bringing the narrative and usage of Wagner back home and as topical as ever. In recent years, “Army of Thieves” (2021) and “Promising Young Woman” (2020) have reignited Wagnerian music’s lighter side, comedies being the new direction.

So, here we are in 2024, and the legacy of Wagner’s music is as robust as ever. Will there ever be a time when his music is NOT a favorite among directors? Probably not. In any case, let’s relax until the Valkyries come in and the ring is given back to the Rhein (PS: You’ll know it has been returned when the world comes crashing down).

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On November 1, at 8 p.m. (PDT), the new film, “Eun Sun Kim: A Journey Into Lohengrin,” was broadcast for the first time, although being available for viewing already. Featuring the Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim and her labors around the preparation of San Francisco Opera’s 2023 production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” the behind-the-scenes film is but one in a growing trend of operatic films designed to show the background of staged operatic marvels. 

Having grown up in Seoul, South Korea, she gained her musical training both at home and abroad, reaching the conducting mainstream thanks to her success at the 2008 Lopez Cobos International Opera Conductors Competition. Since then, she has gone on to conduct many high-profile works within the operatic and performance spaces around Europe. In 2021, Kim was appointed music director of San Francisco Opera, effective until the 2030-31 season. The film documents the great challenges posed in staging “Lohengrin,” with the many layers of collaboration being the bulk of the film’s content. Describing the film’s narrative, the Opera House wrote, 

“Eun Sun Kim: A Journey Into Lohengrin offers a rare glimpse into the process of mounting Wagner’s monumental 1850 opera and assembling the many layers of preparation, from coaching roles and staging the opera’s large choral scenes to balancing the sounds of the musicians located in the pit as well as across great distances around the Opera House.”

However, this behind-the-scenes-film, like aforementioned, is not the only one of its kind. Others like Jaime Casanova Amar’s 2024 film about the Mexican premiere of “Parsifal,” Ozarks Lyric Opera’s 2024 film, “An OverKnight Success: The Crazy Life of an Opera Singer,” and even other projects like an opera music video and intimately filmed live opera, showing that San Francisco Opera is certainly riding a wave of interest.

Things trend for a reason and in the spirit of operatic and classical music accessibility, it makes sense that they would want to provide opportunities to show their own backstage. In light of this new project, let us examine some of the ways “Lohengrin” has been captured on the screen, both formally in filmed operatic production, and less formally in popular entertainment from before WWII to the famous year of 1991 and beyond. 

“One Hundred Men and a Girl” (1937, Henry Koster)

Starring the eminent conductor Leopold Stokowski alongside trained singer and actress Deanna Durbin, student of operatic bass Andrés de Segurola, the original notary in Puccini’s “Gianni Schicci,” the musical is a historical landmark of cinematic musicals. The film uses several classical pieces including Wagner’s “Lohegrin,” namely the Act three prelude, and the “Allellujah” from Mozart’s K. 165 (Exsultate, jubilate). Stokowski was also featured in the 1947 film, “Carnegie Hall,” where Wagner’s orchestral prelude to “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” can be heard. 

“A Foreign Affair” (1948, Billy Wilder)

A WWII love triangle, this film balanced between politics and humor with great reception. Starring Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur, the soon-to-be blacklisted Stanley Prager, and radio actor Michael Raffetto, the Wagnerian element is the film’s use of the overture to “Lohengrin.’” Musically, the film was directed by Friedrich Hollaender, a German emigre composer and former student of Engelbert Humperdinck. The film was particularly seditious because, as Gerd Gemünden points out, it “mocks not only Nazi Germany but also American occupation and Puritan morals” in the wake of de-Nazification and American involvement in post-war Germany.

“Ludwig” (1973, Luchino Visconti)

Generally disliked at the time but now looked on fondly, Visconti’s film about King Ludwig II of Bavaria and his adoration of Richard Wagner, historically accurate and the reason why Wagner’s operas were so widely performed and supported by his milieu at the time, the film won many awards for its cinematic captivity. To summarize, Ludwig II became a supporter of Wagner when he heard “Lohengrin” as a teenager. It was not until Wagner’s return to Dresden after 13 years away due to political exile that Ludwig II became an adoring patron of his work. The film features a sampling, from “Lohengrin” to “Tristan und Isolde,” as well as the work, “Elegie in A Flat Major.”

“Lohengrin” (1991, Werner Herzog)

Produced by Brian Large and Werner Herzog for Unitel GmbH & Co. KG (or just UNITEL), this version featured some of the most high-profile Wagnerian singers of the day. From Paul Frey and Gabriele Schnaut to Cheryl Studer and Manfred Schenk, the work was featured a time in global history where the powers of the world were changing in drastic ways. As Bayreuth Festival production, the film was a touchstone for the highest quality of cinematic treatment of Wagner’s world, with tasteful staging and subtly modern costuming.

“Wagner: Lohengrin” (2006, Pietro D’Agostino)

Directed by Chef Pietro D’Agostino and filmed at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, the film helped bring Wagner into the contemporary period by featuring an artistic style far more non-traditional than previous productions. From available clips, one can easily see how provocative the choices made must have been, this being before the era of Wagnerian productions we currently find ourselves in. Critical reception was generally negative and the choices to go so far from the Middle Ages epoch was not favored in the slightest. 

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Taking three years to write, composer Yonatan Cnaan and director Ido Ricklin’s opera, “Theodor: The Unknown Story of Herzl,” is a summarization of Theodor Herzl’s life. It was premiered by the Israeli Opera House in 2023, following the attacks on October 7th, 2023. Conducted by Nimrod David Pfeffer, the evening was powerful and monumental. Luckily, it was filmed live, with the recording now available for viewing per request. But even more exciting was the announcement of the film’s American premiere at the beginning of September.

On September 23, the film had its American premiere. In speaking about the event, Cnaan writes, “Sharing Herzl’s vision and values through my music feels more urgent than ever.” So impactful, and topical, was the opera that it was named one of Opera Now’s World’s Best Operas of 2023. Returning to the Israeli Opera House in 2025, the opera and its filmed version are available for private screenings per request. Interestingly, other operas about Herzl also exist, like Alex Weiser and Ben Kaplan’s opera, “State of the Jews“ (2024), along with topical operas about sensitive topics like dam Gorb and Ben Kaye’s “The Path to Heaven“ (2024). Thus, Herzl’s legacy is secure and we are fortunate that artistic projects exist which spread his activities to larger audiences who don’t know him yet.

Let’s discover a little bit more about Herzl’s life, his many works, and the Jewish experience in opera.

Who Was Theodor Herzl?

Considered by many as the “father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) played a seminal role in popularizing the belief through various ways. Whether through distributed pamphlets like “Der Judenstaat“ (1896, Leipzig and Vienna), establishing the “World Zionist Organization” (WZO) with co-founder Max Nordau (1897), or via diplomatic relations with everyone priests to sultans, Herzl worked towards the dissemination and popularization of Zionism. From novels, “The Old New Land” (1902), to meetings with Pope Pius X, Herzl tried nearly everything.

Having grown up in the late-19th to early-20th centuries, a time of anti-Semitism, at first he advocated for a more assimilationist orientation before rejecting his desire to combat anti-Semitism by advocating for a more political position on the matter. Beginning in the late-19th century onwards, publications like the 1897 article, “Mauschel,” published in the newspaper “Die Welt,“ founded by Herzl the same year, became the principal documents which spearheaded the push towards realizing Zionism. Responding to the growing crises in European ways of life as industrialization, demographic shifts, and agrarian crisis, with many moving to urban regions for work, Herzl saw in late-19th Austro-Hungarian life that there were great divisions between how Jewish sects related to each other. While openly embracing European and non-Jewish cultural ways of being, referred to as “Jewish assimilation,” many did not, including Herzl who, starting his life as a “Germanophile,” transitioned after the “Dreyfus affair.”

He argued that the rife anti-Semitism was the push towards a fuller embrace of Judaism. While anti-Semitism was getting stronger, typified by British-German philosopher Housten Chamberlain’s 1899 book, “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,” only 17 years before Madison Grant’s 1916 book, “The Passing of the Great Race,” so too was Zionism. Following the establishment of the World Jewish Congress in 1897, along with the popularization of other pro-Zionist works like Leon Pinsker’s 1882 pamphlet, “Auto-Emancipation,” Herzl’s political activities grew more pronounced as the 20th century continued on. Participating in everything from the first of two “Hague Conventions“ in 1899, urging wealthy persons like Maurice de Hirsch to create organizations like the Jewish Colonisation Association (1891) and offshoots like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (1924), Herzl’s life was well spent. At the end of his life, he continued to advocate for a Jewish homecoming through diplomatic work across Europe. In 1903, after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom in the Russian Empire, repeated once again in 1905, he met with Russia’s first Prime Minister Sergei Witte to ask for the improved treatment of Jews in Russia.

His last act was the proposal of the “Uganda Scheme,” an ambitious plan to create a Jewish homeland in East Africa. Highly controversial as it went against previous goals laid out in Zionism’s first manifestation, the “Basel Program“ (1897), as well as being critiqued by the British for supporting Jews over their own people, it was ultimately rejected in 1905. However, as a result, the Jewish Territorial Organization was created to find a solution to the problem of a Jewish homeland outside of Palestine. In the decades and century after his death, Herzl’s legacy and work expanded with countless developments, tributes, and forms of legacy contributions to the cause of Zionism, and with this operatic film, his work has now become even more proliferated, albeit via a new medium.

“Jewishness” Through Opera

In Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitic essay, “Das Judenthum in der Musik“ (1850), he argued, “So long as the separate art of Music had a real organic life-need in it, down to the epochs of Mozart and Beethoven, there was nowhere to be found a Jew composer,” yet he was so very wrong. As revived, rediscovered, and recovered operas by Jewish composers have shown, the Jewish experience through opera is as powerful then as it is now. While both Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann despised Giacomo Meyerbeer on anti-Semitic grounds, hidden behind aesthetic critiques, he had a prolific career, including the operas like “Les Huguenots” (1836) and “Robert le diable” (1831).

From celebrated figures like Felix Mendelssohn to lesser-known figures like German Julius Eichberg, family friend of Mendelssohn, Jewish-Romanian composer Raoul Gunsbourg, championed by Tsar Alexander III of Russia, Adolphe Samuel, one-time friend with Berlioz, and Karl Goldmark, a prolific Viennese composer and cold acquaintance with Wagner, musical “Jewishness” is far from lacking in living essence. Most famously, Fromental Halévy’s acclaimed opera, “La Juive“ (1835), put both ‘Jewishness’ and Francophile grand opera on the map, celebrated by Wagner despite his anti-Semitic critiques. The ubiquity of anti-Semitism during the mid-late 19th century stopped many composers from hearing the beauty Jewish composers had to offer, only tolerating it in exceptional cases like that Halévy. Most unfortunate is the Strauss line’s short Jewish legacy, Johann Strauss I’s grandfather converting to Catholicism, whilst the Soviet composer Veniamin Fleishman’s musical infusions of Jewish folk music, incapsulated in his opera, Rothschild’s Violin (1939-41), shows that ‘Jewishness’ can thrive in difficult situations. Other later operas like Jacob Weinberg’s “The Pioneers” (1941-47) attest to such a state.

Capturing the different facets of the Jewish experience through opera has come in many shapes and sizes. From the first opera written in Israel, “Dan Hashomer“ (1945) by Marc Lavry and premiered in 1950, figures like Michael Ajzenstadt and his seminal contributions as part of Israel Opera, to contemporary Hebrew operas like “Mothers“ (2021), being Jewish through opera is as diverse as it comes. As historical revivals like the Ashkenaz Festival’s North American premiere of the only known pre-Holocaust Yiddish opera, “Bas Sheve“ (1924) also demonstrate, there is much we still don’t know about the Jewish experience through opera. Further, the 2022 premiere of Eugen Engel’s opera, “Grete Minde“ (pre-1941) never performed during his lifetime and killed in 1943, by Theater Magdeburg show that there are many Jewish composers and works not yet known to the wider world.

While historically-significant operas written during WWII like Kurt Weil’s “We Will Never Die“ (1943), Viktor Ullmann’s “Der Kaiser von Atlantis“ (1943) and  Hans Krása’s “Brundibár“ (1944) are three particularly well-known examples of Jewish operas written during Nazi dictatorship, other post-war examples also exist which give audiences a stark reminder of the horrors that befell the Jewish community. Among the many examples, Shulamit Ran’s “Ann Frank“ (2023), Mikis Theodorakis’s celebrated “Mauthausen Trilogy“ (1988) and Jake Heggie’s two operas, “For a Look or a Touch” (2007) and “Another Sunrise” (2012), showcase and typify the immortal phrase, “Never again.” But, and it must be stressed, WWII does not define the Jewish experience nor the Jewish experience through opera. Post-WWII Jewish operas like Alexander Veprik’s “Toktogul“ (1940/1949), Josef Tal’s experimentalist operas, “Ashmedai“ (1969) and “Masada 967“ (1972), Bruce Adolphe’s “Mikhoels the Wise” (1982), and Solomon Epstein’s Yiddish-language opera “The Dybbuk: An opera in Yiddish“ (1999) show just how rich the pool really is. More contemporaneously, operas likes Gerald Cohen’s “Steal A Pencil For Me“ (2024), and the chamber opera “The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language“ (2024), keep the fire of creativity alive by marrying history with art.

Together with art, history, activism, and creativity, more of the Jewish experience will come to find an outlet through opera and it is only a matter of time when the next big opera comes to stages around the world. From Detlev Glanert’s “Die Jüdin von Toledo” (2024) to Evan Rapport and Daniel London’s “A Dying Person (A Goyses)” (2023), there are many folds of the Jewish experience not yet revealed and patiently waiting its turn to take the limelight.

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Maria Callas, better known as La Divina and the immortal muse of art, died on September 16, 1977, having lived a life that no-one else could have lived—or, better phrased, survived. Having sung in practically every major house in the world; recorded a enormous quantity of material from Verdi, Puccini, and Bellini, to Wagner, Spontini, Bizet, Rossini, and Donizetti; and amassed an immortal fanbase, La Divina shaped opera into an epic mode of superhuman expressiveness. Dissatisfied with simply performing, under La Divina opera became more than what happened on stage: it became a way of life. The Callas off the stage were just as operatic as the Callas on the stage, and one’s life became their art, their art becoming their life in turn. But, as the dedicated devotee will already know, this life comes with consequences. Callas’ life and its many peaks, troughs, and curves is enough to fill volumes of books: and indeed it has. Thus, anyone can now read about the life of La Divina for themselves. 

From the iconic 1983 biography by Stelios Galatopoulos, the 2002 biography by Arianna Huffington, and the 2001 biography by Anne Edwards, to the more-recent additions like John DiGaetani’s 2021 biography and Sophia Lambton’s 2023 biography, it is not enough to say that Maria Callas changed opera forever. Instead, one must understand that she changed what we consider opera to begin with. La Divina showed us that not just anyone can call themselves an opera singer, nor is operatic singing simply about mastering the art of bel canto at the expense of everything else. Rather there are many skills necessary to produce true opera in its highest form.

One of her most notable comments on gesture in opera offers insight into who La Divina was as an artist. In conversation with George Lascelles in 1968, she made the seminal comment, “When one wants to find a gesture, when you want to find how to act onstage, all you have to do is listen to the music. The composer has already seen to that.” And, if one considers another comment by Italian opera conductor Antonino Votto, teacher of Riccardo Muti, it becomes clear that someone like Callas will never come again; “She was not just a singer, but a complete artist. It’s foolish to discuss her as a voice. She must be viewed totally—as a complex of music, drama, movement.” From stage plays to performance art pieces, Maria Callas’ legacy will never be forgotten: not now, nor ever, especially if her eternal fanbase has anything to say about it. Indeed, Facebook pages are dedicated to her!

To celebrate “Maria,” the new biofilm by Pablo Larraín, we will take a look through the many films and posthumous documentaries of Maria Callas. Although only participating in one film proper during her lifetime, La Divina has succeeded in becoming one of the most frequently-portrayed operatic singers in film since her death. From the first films in the 1970s and 1980s to the most recent, Callas’ cinematic legacy is one of many dimensions.

Callas On Screen (Before 1977)

The dramatic appearance of Callas onscreen gives some indication as to what she must have been like in person. Many of the younger generations, those born since her death in 1977, only know Callas through her recordings, videos, interviews, and immortalized likeness in paintings and sculpture. There were, however, two filmed projects created during her lifetime that proved to be influential chapters in her life, despite its dramatic ending. 

The 1958 live video recording of her debut concert performance at the Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris has been recently brought to the fore by the controversial ‘hologram performance.’ In the original recording she sang one of the most iconic versions of Bizet’s ‘Habanera,’ from “Carmen.” Cloaked in her crimson shawl—a ferociously iconic look—with her hair up and cat eyes drawn sharp, each and every aria sung by Callas, including her equally iconic versions of Bellini’s ‘Casta Diva,’ from “Norma,” Rossini’s ‘Una Voce Poco Fa,’ from “Il barbiere di Siviglia,” and scenes from Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and Puccini’s “Tosca,” makes the performance an irreplicable window into what it must have been like to experience Callas onstage. Recalling the performance, the official website notes that most, if not all, of Paris’ political elite clamored for a seat at this concert. Everyone from French President René Coty to actress Brigitte Bardot were in attendance the night that Callas commanded the world.

Despite being fired from the Met the same year, her career only grew exponentially after 1958. In 1965 she would give another iconic performance: the Zeffirelli performance of Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House in London. Commenting on Callas’ vocal decline after the mid-1950s, Joan Sutherland made a (generally accepted) observation, “I don’t think that anyone who heard Callas after 1955 really heard the Callas voice.” Renée Fleming theorised that she lost muscular support to her voice after her weight loss; no matter the cause, in the 1958 recording Callas is at her best. In this recording, all of La Divina is shown in glorious detail.

In her second, and final, film appearance, La Divina featured as the damned anti-heroine in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film adaption of Euripides’ play “Medea.” This role was a part of her bel canto transition after her 1949 ‘“I puritani” performance. By this time in Callas’ career, she had retired from singing and removed herself largely from the eye of public scrutiny. She had sung her last stage role in 1965, and in 1968 had laid to rest pernicious rumors about a rivalry between herself and soprano Renata Tebaldi—a relationship sensationalized to the ire of both Callas and Tibaldi throughout their careers which was never as extreme as it was made out to be.

Yet, in Pasolini’s film, appearing alongside Massimo Girotti and Laurent Terzieff, and although the film itself did not achieve significant commercial success, Callas’ new cinematic chapter became one of immense importance. This appearance and her 1971 masterclasses at Julliard became catalysts for her attempted return to performance in 1974, culminating in her tragically canceled performance of “Tosca” in 1975—a cancellation likely brought about due to her diagnosis of dermatomyositis. Callas’ film career had a huge impact on her life, and in the years following her death her cinematic star would continue to rise. Had Callas lived, her cinematic career would have flourished. 

Posthumous Callas (1977-2007)

The next 30 years would solidify Callas’ name in the annals of operatic history worldwide: from biographies, articles in dozens of languages, memorials, and videos, to interviews, unspoken remembrances, and tributes of every size and shape. Within the film world, there were many documentaries made that fixed La Divina in the minds of audiences ranging from those familiar with her art to those totally outside her world. In the 1980s her legacy was a contentious one. It was without a singular version and instead entirely dependent upon what and how one thought. In an iconic interview in 1982 between Opera News, Joan Sutherland, and conductor Richard Bonynge, the latter noted that Callas’ weight loss altered her robust dramatic voice, causing it to become thinner in size. 

Ironically, it was the weight loss that helped her achieve international rapport outside of her talent. While Callas did not need to lose weight to become, as conductor Nicola Rescigno says, “possibly the most beautiful lady on the stage”—for she was already this to begin with—losing weight helped her gain an irrefutable presence onstage that stole the hearts of millions, though sacrificing a longer, healthier career. Nevertheless, despite the many health problems that plagued her, Callas succeeded in becoming immortal: so long as our planet remains.

The first documentary about Callas appears to have been Tony Palmer’s 1978 documentary, “Callas: A Documentary.” Palmer’s depiction of Callas was the first project to shed light on the harrowing elements of her life. The second posthumous film about La Divina was Alan Lewens and Alastair Mitchell’s 1987 film, “Maria Callas: Life and Art.” This was an archival documentary featuring interviews with those who knew and worked with her, as well as footage from performances and interviews with her where her sagacity is shown.

This format would become, more or less, the standard way to present Callas after her death, with a mixture of recorded statements and footage giving fuel for the imagination to embrace the enigma that was Maria Callas. In 1988 another documentary was released entitled “Maria Callas: La Divina – A Portrait,” made for ITV and once again directed by Palmer. The opening line of the film, “It has been ten years since Maria Callas died,” is a sobering reminder that to those like Palmer, Callas’ death was not something distant and historical but very much real. The legend, the divine, had succumb to nature’s law just like the rest of us, and in living memory.

It can be said that by 1988, audiences who had known Callas now knew Callas in a far deeper way than ever before. Since her death they had become intimately familiar with the many facets of her identity. From 1988 to 2002, a break in Callas-centric filmmaking occurred, but interest reignited thanks to Zeffirelli’s 2002 biofiction, “Callas Forever.” This was the last film made before his death in 2009, and a love-letter to La Divina, whom he had worked with in her last stage performance of “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House in London in 1965. It was this performance where people by the dozens and dozens had lined up outside to get their hands on tickets. 

In 2004 another television documentary was made, “Maria Callas: Living and Dying for Art and Love” by Steve Cole, which followed her 1965 performance of “Tosca.” It must be remembered that in 2007, Callas was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in that same year, French film director Phillipe Kohly released the documentary “Callas assoluta.” This film marked the end of the second chapter of Callas’ cinematic legacy, one that would resume 10 years later. However, this was no hiatus for La Divina and her legacy. In 2012 Callas was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame, while the 2014 “Maria Callas Remastered Edition” by Warner Classics gave fans additional fuel to the fire of their undying love for Maria Callas, La Divina. 

Continuing A Legacy (2017-2024)

Following a 10 year pause, the world’s obsession with Callas would reignite. It is within this wave that we find ourselves today. In 2017, two books were released about La Divina, namely film director Tom Volf’s biographies, “Maria by Callas” and “Callas Confidential.” It is the former that successfully launched the ‘third wave’ of Callas’ cinematic legacy. The now iconic 2017 documentary “Maria by Callas,” based upon the eponymous book, portrayed La Divina in a new light. In this film Callas is given the chance to speak on her own behalf. We are told the narrative of who she was as a woman and as an artist from her perspective, not ours. With colorized and restored footage, particularly the notable footage of audiences lining up outside to get tickets to her final performance of “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House, the importance of “Maria by Callas” cannot be stated enough. It set a new standard for the onscreen depiction of Callas. As La Divina says in the film, “I have to feel what I do.”

This film gives us the chance to understand Callas not as a goddess but a human being attempting to live up to the difficult image her audience had built for her. After this, a surge in interest in Callas began, resulting in the strange hologram tour by BASE Hologram Productions titled “Callas in Concert.” Here audiences were treated to a simulacrum of Callas’ 1958 Paris debut performance. It was received poorly, being considered an unnerving attempt at reversing the painful reality that Maria Callas was, in fact, dead and never coming back to us, no matter how much her audience wanted her to. After this fiasco, in 2019 Volf published a third book about La Divina: “Maria Callas: Lettres & Mémoires (Maria Callas: Letters & Memoirs).” Once again Callas was given a chance to speak on her own behalf through essays written by her throughout her life. Thus, Callas now speaks for herself. 

This new era of cinematic work concerning Callas can be defined as one where Callas has become the narrator of her own story, rather than having others step in the way and tell it for her. The veil of greatness has been drawn back, revealing the woman behind La Divina. Here is a woman who is hurting, grieving, struggling, and surviving but whose difficulties only sometimes reach the ears of her adoring followers. Now, at last, we are able to see La Divina for who she actually was. In 2022 Tony Palmer’s 1988 documentary was uploaded to YouTube under the abbreviated title, “Callas.” The stage play adaptation of Volf’s book “Maria Callas’ Letters and Memoirs” became a success thanks to the participation of Monica Bellucci in its 2019 Parisian premiere. 

Between 2019 and 2023—the latter being the year that Volf’s book was made into film—events were created in Callas’ name and a statue of her, made by sculptor Aphrodite Liti, was unveiled in Athens. The latter was castigated on social media for what was widely considered to be its distasteful depiction of La Divina. It cannot be denied that the statue looks nothing like Callas but, nevertheless, it remains standing to this day in the land of her ancestors. Volf’s film was a part of the continued, gradual expansion of high-profile interest in the cinematic aspects of Callas’ life. In 2024 two films have opened fresh chapters in the Callas cinematic world. While the Pablo Lorrian film, “Maria,” is more well-known given its recent premiere, a Greek version called “Maria Callas” also debuted this year. This was made by the Greek director Antonis Karagiannis with the role performed by Mae George. The legacy of Callas in film, memory, art, and in the minds of fans, will never die. She achieved the impossible: immortality.

Though her body is not here, her presence is, and she will never be forgotten. As a fan of Callas through her many videos and recordings, I cannot help but sometimes feel as if Maria Callas was someone who never really existed: but she did. She was real. A woman of epic proportions, and we are honored to love her, forever and ever.  

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Some of the first Wagnerian operas to make it to Mexico came in the late 19th century—specifically “Die Walküre” in 1891—but, it should be noted, Mexico has a long history of domestic opera composition that, in many cases, rivals that of Wagner. Nevertheless, the premiere of Wagner’s “Parsifal” in Mexico marks a huge achievement in the continued development of Mexico’s operatic legacy, one definitively not centered around attachment to European opera but inevitably shaped by its presence. It should also be noted that the production is a revised variation of its 2013 form, first presented at the Amazonas Opera Festival in Brazil. This is another location with its own unique relationship to Wagner’s operas: to commemorate the opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876, many dignitaries and artists came, including the last monarch of Brazil, Pedro II, an abolitionist and patron of the arts. 

As staging designer Sergio Vela shared with Liber Magazine, “’Tannhäuser’ has not been performed in Mexico since 1947, ‘Lohengrin’ since 1980 or 1981, and ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ was only performed in 1963.” The 1996 recording of “Tristan und Isolde” featuring Jon West and Luana DeVol was another important milestone. Bringing “Parsifal” to the operatic stage in Mexico continues a trajectory that is long-since started, but in need of special attention. Nevertheless, another production has been added to the cap of Wagner’s posthumous legacy. One part of the legacy, however, is the capturing of the event, and founder of nonprofit TV project MERIDA1 TV, Jaime Casanova Amar’s capture of the event in documentary form is an artistic statement in itself. Amar spoke with Opera Wire about his life, the documentary, and his experiences.

Opera Wire: Can you share a bit about the documentary? 

Jaime Casanova Amar: The documentary is a 65-minute feature that will be published on YouTube (youtube.com/merida1tv) and public access TV. Also, several screenings will be held in different venues, [being released in] September 2024. It will consist of a ‘first glance’ backstage [as well as] interviews with all singers, artists, and creators involved in highly celebrated Sergio Vela’s premiere production of “Parsifal” in Mexico—which is a work that involves hundreds of minutes [in terms of] video material. The film also covers the cities of León, Merida, and Mexico City.

OW: Can you tell me a bit about your nonprofit television project? 

JCA: MERIDA1 TV—the tv production team behind the film—was founded by myself in 2013. In 11 years, the project has done documentaries of different topics: social causes, public figures, festivals, artists, etcetera. Classical music and opera are no exception: [we have made] a couple of documentaries about two major orchestras of Yucatan; the opera workshop of Yucatan; a women-only orchestra of Campeche; and a series of interviews regarding Wagner-related topics recorded in Bayreuth. There are also documentaries produced by MERIDA1 TV in countries such as Canada, United States, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Austria, and Germany.

OW: How did you get into Wagner in the first place? 

JCA: I have to thank my father for a mind-blowing arias-duets-trios DECCA CD he bought when I was just a child. Immediately I became in love with such lovely music and intense performances: it would take my breath away. I didn’t know back then, but I was laying the ground for my greatest passion yet to come. A few years later I was at the movie theater with my mother watching Jurassic Park and at that very moment wanted to become a movie director: that film invited our generation to dream again! Years went by and then reality hit me and I gave that up. At the end of my teenage years, I decided to start—or resume, for that matter—my curiosity for classical music and then I found out about Brian Large (a video director and producer of more than 500 concerts, operas, documentaries, etcetera). 

OW: What was the creation process of the documentary like for you?

JCA: From the start this production was more than special. Sergio Vela, “Parsifal’s” stage director, also directed the first complete Ring Cycle in Mexico and a lot of other operas as well. Something really significant was the indirect line to the Bayreuth Festspielhaus: the music director of the “Parsifal” premiere, Maestro Guido Maria Guida, was assistant to the great Giuseppe Sinopoli during his tenure as a regular director in Wagner’s festival (until his passing in the early 2000’s). For a big Wagnerian this can’t go unnoticed. As Sergio Vela said to the production crew in the last performance: the experience of being there as a part of this important production will stay in the deepest of our hearts and souls forever.

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Previously, we explored Opera Essentia’s new performance film of their performance of Handel’s ‘Imeneo,’ Edoardo Zucchetti and Michael Spires’ auto-documentary of his career and experiences, and even Mario Bergmann’s cinematic capturing of  Polly Ott’s performance of Ambroise Thomas’ ‘À vos jeux, mes amis.’ Recently, another innovative piece of art has captured the attention of the contemporary opera-cinema world, namely Daron Hagen and his new opera film, ‘9/10: Love Before the Fall.’ The plot is centered around a contemporized take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth by focusing on Orpheus and Charon, the former the fated lover and the latter the ferryman of the underworld. The film can be seen as a neo-Gesamtkunstwerk form of operatic cinema where each and everything seen on the screen, from the cuts to the lighting to the pacing, reflect the internal motivations of the story. Interestingly, this isn’t Hagen’s first film, his first being his 2021 film, ‘Orson Rehearsed,’ whilst three more are being added to his oeuvre (‘I Hear America Singing’ in May 2024, ‘New York Stories’ in 2025, and ‘Deception in Prayer’ [TBD]). Operatically, he’s composed 14 operas thus far, with his compositional skills and musical abilities being praised by composers like Ned Rorem and publications like The Chicago Tribune. 

I got the chance to talk with Hagen about several aspects of his creative process and what I learned was a fascinating insight into the mind of a 21st-century artist whose spirit is unchained from a singular medium.

OperaWire: Where did you first craft the film’s idea(s)?

Daron Hagen: I lived in Manhattan for 28 years, and experienced 9/11 firsthand. It happens that I wrote the treatment in New York City in September 2011 as a “one sheet” project proposal for a Guggenheim fellowship, but I had been developing the idea as a project pitch for nearly a decade. The description begins, “We meet and get to know six [six became four as I wrote the screenplay / libretto] New Yorkers the night before their rendezvous’ with destiny not in a taxicab like their Audenesque forebears, but in an Italian Restaurant in New York’s Little Italy.” It must have landed with the committee, because the proposal was accepted; and that acceptance set the project in motion. Conceptually, it began as a staged opera incorporating filmic and electronic elements, but, during production of my “opera film” Orson Rehearsed, it became clear to me that the ideal way to tell the story would be as the filmic sequel to Orson, as it continued my examination of that project’s themes. I have just wrapped filming of I Hear America Singing, which serves as the third installment of what I have come to call The Bardo Trilogy. 

OW: How did you deal with challenges of singing and film?

DH: This is a gigantic question, and it is the question. It cuts to the center of my fascination with the making of films that inextricably interweave live vocal performance with pre-planned screenplay. I love and admire singers. If I had begun my life as a filmmaker instead of as an opera composer, I would not find as much raw inspiration in working with actors (and creating an environment that helped them do their work) compelled to maintain a physically healthy alignment to sing while acting as I do. Singing requires an actor to be conversant with being hyper-exposed, larger than life; film requires that they either contain themselves or risk their credibility by being “too big.”  

Marni Nixon and I discussed for several years, off and on, the challenge that she faced as an actress and singer in overcoming the emotional disconnect baked into the job of looping someone else’s physical performance. I found the human, aesthetic, and technical issues that we discussed during these conversations terrifically inspiring. 

This is the simple answer from the director’s point of view: I’ve tried several ways to deal with the difficulty of documenting singers’ live vocal performances on film. Having them perform with a combination of live instruments and pre-recorded playback served for Orson Rehearsed; combining a character as the violinist Charon, a character (Eurydice), who is heard on the radio but never seen as part of the “canned music” typically heard in a bistro with the live singers served for 9/10: Love Before the Fall; in I Hear America Singing the entire project was filmed with a single camera and boom in a “documentary” sound world with the accompaniment only of the live on screen piano. 

OW: Did the acting pose challenges for singing?

Although the difference between musical theater acting singers and operatic singing actors is not absolute, typically, musical theater acting singers lean into characterization and operatic singing actors focus, because their audience requires it, on beauty of sound. A musical theater singer can be a Stanislavskian, or a Method actor, feeling the emotions that the character is experiencing, because their audience interprets their “getting choked up” as emotional authenticity. To maintain proper alignment of the instrument, most opera singers are taught that they cannot risk allowing a Strasbergian remembrance of experience to get them verklempt. Consequently, Classical acting is their usual go-to, as it requires “sticking to the script,” which composers and conductors appreciate. The chamber musician in them cottons to the sort of finding of truth through ensemble building of the Meisner method. Authenticity through collective imagination allows the muscles to remain aligned, and the voice to emerge, physically “unaffected” by the emotion conveyed. 

In Robert Frankenberry (who—as he did so beautifully in Orson Rehearsed—switch hit as a performer and as musical director) I had a collaborator with the expertise as a vocal coach to help his colleagues make vocally healthy technical decisions while managing the radical shifts in singing styles central to their roles. For example, Tony’s role was written to be executed by a singing actor; Bibi’s role was written for an operetta-scaled light soubrette; Cory was written for a big-voiced, uniquely American crossover opera/musical theater voice; Trina was written for a contemporary vocal music specialist. The interaction between vocal traditions was everything to me. 

OW: The opera is a “rondo” but how did you create structure?

DH: Key centers and characters were coordinated, as I have coordinated them since the beginning of my life as an opera composer. What was new was that I associated specific shot types with key centers. Emotional intimacy was associated with handheld cameras — the more intimate the utterance, the closer the camera. I blocked the arias on the move, circling the bistro, while dialogue and ensembles were blocked as stationary — either seated, or standing still. On a musical level, live” (analogue) performers on the soundtrack coincided with heightened emotion, the stuff of “magical realism,” while “canned” (Midi, or pre-recorded digital sounds) were paired with quotidian dialogue, the stuff of corporeal “life.” The large ensemble with which the opera film climaxes utilizes split screen in order to closely track all four singers in the ensemble; they stand and deliver. On the other hand, the visceral pleasure and fraternity of the “eating” ensembles at table is captured by 360 degree camera moves that serve as ”visual embraces” tying the characters together and celebrating their joy. 

OW: What kinds of films do you like?

DH: Orson Welles, of course. Because of his wild brilliance, his ardent humanity, his stubborn faith in the intelligence of his audience. I have a sort of distant, sentimental adoration for Truffaut’s Antonie Doinel films. I saw them at a time when I needed their cool modernism. I love almost anything with Fred Astaire in it. I admire Kurosawa, but I need Cassavetes. Individual films were important to me: Harold and Maude, Casablanca (which is an opera), nearly all Chaplin. Coppola when he is intimate. Nearly everything Noah Baumbach has made so far , because we have the same cultural reference points, and I really get to know his characters.

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One of the German pioneers, Carl Froelich, helped establish the German variant of the “talkie,” or the sound film. From “The Night Belongs to Us” (1929), to many others, Froelich’s work was revolutionary. A particularly interesting film, “Fire At The Opera” (1930), is among the many films to use opera as the base of its plot and musical narrative. Shot at the Babelsberg Studios in Berlin, the film exemplified the continued domination of the sound film in the European world and marked the definitive emergence of a new era of film.

A Plot Fit For Opera

The film’s story follows the narrative of many famous love triangles, frustrated pursuits, and tried and true love-themed operas and operettas, from Johann Strauss II’s “Die Fledermaus” to Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte.” Set in post-war Germany, among the wealthy upper class, General Director Otto van Lingen prides himself on his ability to capture the hearts of women. This time, however, he wishes to pursue choir singer Floriane Bach who is less enthralled with him than he with her. Bach works at the local opera house and in preparation for a production of Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann,” three girls are in the running for the female leads of Stella, Olympia, and Guilietta. This is a traditional staging of “Tales,” wherein one soprano is expected to sing all three women—today, usually, the roles are split between more than one.

Van Lingen jumps at this chance to get Bach’s attention by being her patron and ensuring she secures the role, but ultimately his efforts are undone by his secretary and friend Richard Faber, who aids Bach instead. Nevertheless, when they do meet, he tries to court her but this too fails. In light of this, Faber and Bach become close friends which angers van Lingen further, who assumes they are lovers not friends. Following an uncontrollable blaze at the opera house right before the evening’s production, van Lingen and Faber reconcile their disagreements. Upon seeing that Bach has fainted from the smoke, they both quickly rush to her aid. Van Lingen, realizing that the two really do love each other, refrains from interfering further and allows their romance to blossom.

A Vanguard Product of Its Time 

Froelich’s film was praised by critics for its inventiveness and masterful ability to blend sound and dramaturgy: a relatively new feat, considering sound films had only been introduced to the world as a new medium for film in the late 1910s, and were not seen as commercially viable till the second half of the 1920s. In Germany’s case, three German inventors began working on the development of sound-in-film in 1919. Josef Engl, Hans Vogt, and Joseph Massolle perfected the “Tri-Ergon” system. “The Arsonist” (1922), as one of the first German films to use this technology, heralded the normalization of this system. By the end of the 1920s, it had become one of the dominant technologies in Europe, and the company behind it merged with its competitors to form what would become known as “Tobis Films.” 

While modernist composer Paul Hindemith and those connected with the “Donaueschingen Festival” occupy a famous place in the history of this technology, it is the vast number of films using the technology that is, personally, most exciting. From opera films including the screening of Rossini’s “La gazza ladra,” to Max Mack’s “Ein Tag auf dem Bauernhof” (1928), and Tobis Films’ first project, “I Kiss Your Hand, Madame” (1929), by the start of the 1930s, sound films were all the rage. So advanced were sound films in Germany that even by 1929, some of the first feature-length talkies were being produced, including Walter Ruttmann’s “Melody of the World,” and Carmine Gallone’s “Land Without Women.” At the beginning of the 1930s, despite the American Great Depression and its global ramifications, sound films were continuing their process of cultural normalization. Following the creation of Wilhelm Thiele’s “The Three from the Filling Station” (1930) and Josef von Sternberg’s classic, “The Blue Angel,” (1930) the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry declared, “By now, sound film has become firmly established.” Interestingly, the first German-language sound film to be released to American markets, “It’s You I Have Loved” (1929), took much from its American counterpart, “The Jazz Singer” (1927), which had been screened in Europe for the first time in London in the fall of 1928 and in Berlin without sound. 

Froelich’s film was consequently swirling within a milieu of fast-paced advances both within and without Germany. 1930 also marked the emergence of the “talkie generation” in other countries including France, Poland, and China. Meanwhile, experimental approaches to the new medium were already underway, two of the most idiosyncratic being the French film “L’Age d’Or” (1930), and the Swiss film “Borderline” (1930). Froelich’s film is indeed tame and even conventional for a time aesthetically marked by the birth of post-war surrealism, with Salvadore Dali, American Art Deco, early modernism in music and its school-based derivatives, along with increasingly dramatic, aggressive, violent, humorous, and risque themes onscreen in films like “The Public Enemy” (1931). But, maybe, conventionality was something the viewing public sought? The larger sociopolitical climate of post-war Germany was hardly amicable. Following their defeat and the disintegration of the empire in 1918, and the costly punishments in the form of reparations inflicted by the “Paris Peace Conference,” Germans wanted to laugh. With Froelich’s film, they could.

Wagner & Offenbach Combine

In the film, one can find a quasi-production of Wagner’s 1845 opera, “Tannhäuser,” specifically the Act Two song contest “Sängerkrieg” when the guests are presented to Princess Elisabeth and Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia. Elisabeth is sung by Czech soprano Jarmila Novotná, Hermann by German singer Paul Rehkopf, who was an immensely popular film actor at the time, and German heldentenor Hendrik Appels takes the titular role. The film’s use of Wagner’s opera is done in a traditional fashion, complete with period costuming, traditional frescoed interior palace walls, and the hallmark checkered tile floor. Coincidentally, 1930 marked the beginning of a new era for the Wagnerian celebration that is the Bayreuth Festival. Wagner’s son Siegfried had died and his directorship was taken over by his wife, Winifred, and German conductor Heinz Tietjen. 1930 was also a historical point for the Bayreuth Festival for another reason. Arturo Toscanini, upon the invitation of Winifred, began conducting there. However, his tenure was short-lived, being replaced a year later by German-born Karl Elmendorff. Winifred’s friendship with Adolf Hitler, the association of many members of the Bayreuth Festival of the time with the rising Party, and Toscanini’s outspokenly anti-fascist stance, likely all played a part in his swift replacement.

The other scene sampled by Froelich from “Tannhäuser” is perhaps more famous than the first. This is the “Chorus of the Elderly Pilgrims” in Act Three, part of Tannhäuser’s pilgrimage to Rome to absolve his sins at the behest of Hermann. In the film this is sung by the Berlin Municipal Opera. They were founded in 1925 and serve as the origin of the more contemporary “Deutsche Oper.” Only the final stanza and cathartic “Allelujah” can be heard in the film: “He is not afraid of hell and death; therefore I will praise God all my life!” In the context of the film the choice makes sense. At this point, Bach has been invited to the private apartment of van Lingen and, nervously, she comes to meet him for the first time, not knowing that he is in love with her. In a case of ironic dissonance, the music and the dramaturgy do not align: instead one prefaces the other.

This humorous play of opposites is transformed later in the opera when “The Tales of Hoffman” makes an appearance, serving as both the diegetic music for the film and the opera that the film’s narrative is based upon. During a routine rehearsal of the performance, once can recognize the famous Act Three Venetian serenade between Guilietta and Hoffmann, “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour,” sung in the film by Novotná and an unknown mezzo-soprano; possibly an “Irmgard Gross.” The equally famous “Les oiseaux dans la charmille,” or “The Doll Aria,” is also sung by Novotná. Her performance is of the times, with the tempo relatively fast, fast frame-rate and vibrato, and subdued acting, although the rehearsal format is hardly reflective of the final product. Most of the non-diegetic music used in the film was composed by a relatively unknown German film composer, Hansom Milde-Meißner, who was active into the 1950s. But thanks to Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” we get several shining moment in “Fire At The Opera” where a sound film, made at a time of radical redefinition and experimentation in the world of European arts, entangled with the classical, pre-war world of opera.  

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A Little Bit of Backstory

Let us talk about Yimou’s project. Having made his directorial debut 10 years prior with the film, “Red Sorghum,” based on Mo Yan’s eponymous novel (1986), his next film, “Ju Dou” (1990), dealt with the complexities of trauma, honor, and culture. After the two films gained exceptional popularity and accreditation, throughout the 1990s Yimou’s creativity would take many different forms and move in a variety of directions. During this time he told stories concerning the crude nature of life in China (Keep Cool, 1997) and the discrepancies of opportunity and freedom (Not One Less, 1999). Despite having limited experience in the classical music world, Yimou’s operatic debut would take place within this milieu.

Technically speaking, Yimou’s participation in this project was not entirely his idea. The idea for a new production of Puccini’s “Turandot,” his great unfinished opera, actually came from Indian conductor Zubin Mehta. He was already famous at that time for both his artistic and diplomatic work, where he showed solidarity with the Israeli victims of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; a war whose impact on innocent Israeli lives is still felt today. In 1997, Mehta decided to launch a new production, choosing the Beijing palace complex known as the Forbidden City as its venue. To do this properly, and avoid cliches and stereotypical imagery, he desired to collaborate with a Chinese director. This is where Yimou came in. 

Totaling at $15 million dollars to produce, the opera was (and remains) one of the most expensive operas to have been produced in recent history. The production attempted to generate domestic interest as well as garner foreign intrigue, serving as a merger of the worlds. It was ambitious in the extreme, but brilliantly executed: Mehta noted in an interview that, considering that the piece was performed outdoors, the sound engineers were more than competent. Yimou noted in a press conference that through this project he had hoped to create an atmosphere of “spiritual and emotional exchange.” At the time, politically speaking, Bill Clinton had just visited the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to promote American values, resulting in China signing the ICCPR, or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A spirit of diplomacy infused the entire project: a project that has not been repeated on any comparable scale since 1998, both in terms of budget and international collaboration.

 While Yimou would reprise the “Forbidden City version” of “Turandot” in October 2009, referred to as “Turandot No. 2,” it was not to the same level as the first iteration both in terms of scale, performance dramaturgy, and vocal quality. In 1998 audiences were treated to no less than three Turandots (Giovanna Casolla, Audrey Stottler, and Sharon Sweet), three Calafs (Kristján Jóhannsson, Sergej Larin and Lando Bartolini), and 1,000 chorus members, dancers, and supers, who all filled out the opera’s many elements. Speaking on the opera’s symbolism, Zhang Yu, Executive Producer of the China Performing Arts Agency, clarified that Puccini’s opera “underscores the correctness of China’s policy of opening up to the outside world.” For what it meant in the socio-political milieu of the moment, the project was a landmark, and it has left a unique legacy in the annals of operatic history

China’s “Forbidden City”

But what is the location that Yimou chose for Puccini’s “Turandot,” exactly? Why is an entire city sectioned off? Dubbed the Forbidden City, this 54-acre palace complex is a relic of China’s imperial past and a testament to the enduring legacy of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). In the late 14th century, China was undergoing dramatic change, with the previous Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty having collapsed due to internal revolt. In an attempt to secure China’s state infrastructure, recentralize power, and fully scrap Mongol influence, various steps were taken to prove the validity of Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu) as ruler. Following Hongwu’s death, his son Zhu Yunwen (Jianwen) became the next ruler. Although it was shaky at the beginning, it became regarded as the Dynasty’s “second founding.” Under Jianwen many developments occurred, one of them being the establishment of a new capital of power in 1403: Beijing, otherwise called the Imperial City. Within in the Imperial City laid the luxurious abode of the emperor, the imperial family, their attendants, and other officials. This new palace was dubbed the Forbidden City. 

Construction began in 1406 and was completed in 1420. The area came to enclose 40 buildings, from various ceremonial halls, to studies, kitchens, living spaces, training grounds, gardens, large plazas, throne rooms, and various types of altars and places of worship. Despite the inordinate grandness and opulence of the Forbidden City, at the time the Dynasty’s economy was relatively strong and would only grow increasingly so towards the end of the 17th century, thanks to the “sprouts of capitalism.” The enclosed “city within a city” was therefore both a symbol of imperial authority, control, and divine validation, as well as China’s overall civilizational development. Depictions of the Forbidden City in artistic expressions and aesthetic choices, both at the time and in later decades, developed the alluring mythos of the secluded space and its spiritual and philosophical ethos. The layout of several buildings hold celestial allusions, while color choices and external features correspond to various types of symbolism and representation of power. 

The significance and historical influence that the Forbidden City played (and continues to play) in Chinese history cannot be overstated. Following the various wars of the 19th-early 20th centuries between the Anglosphere and the Qing Dynasty—China’s last imperial dynasty—the Forbidden City ceased to be officially used for state purposes in 1924. Labeled a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, the city still stands as an icon for both Chinese and international history: much like the opera itself. There are many operas that feature imperial China, though they are not all well-known today. Such operas include Tan Dun’s “The First Emperor” (2006) and Lei Lei’s “Xi Shi” (2009). Peter Sellars’ “The Peony Pavilion” (1998), though avant-garde, is based on the 16th-century Ming Dynasty play that incorporates Ming theming into a story set in the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279). However, non-imperial but China-inspired operas, such as John Adams’ “Nixon in China” (1987), often have more renown.

Opera in the Forbidden City

“Turandot” is not the only opera, nor the only Western classical music piece, to have been performed in the Forbidden City. In 1998, the same year as this staging of “Turandot,” Carl Orff’s secular-sacred cantata, “Carmina Burana,” was performed to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Deutsche Grammophon. President Dr. Celmens Trautmann noted a peculiarity in the historical merger between the Bavarian source material and the Forbidden City, namely that the former “came into existence roughly at the same time as the Forbidden City was built in the 14th century.”

Outside of Orff, Peking opera is routinely performed at the venue, the annual Spring Festival in 2010 being a recent and particular highlight. More recently still, three Chinese opera troupes, namely the Tangshan Pingju Opera Company; the Jingju Theatre Company of Beijing; and the Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre, hosted a collective performance at the Forbidden City, in the Concert Hall. This is a modern building constructed by the Japanese in 1942, with its amphitheater added in 1980. Itself designated as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Peking opera has featured in Western opera, most notably in Huang Ruo’s 2022 adaptation of David Hwang’s 1988 play, “M. Butterfly,” itself based on Puccini’s 1904 opera of similar title. 

It is easy to see the role that opera plays in the cultural heritage of China, and the unique role that the Forbidden City plays as a venue for opera and classical music of both Western and non-Western orientations. Interestingly, outside of “Turandot,” Yimou also aided in the production of “Tosca” to mark the beginning of China’s first official opera festival: a 79-day event featuring a total of 13 operas by 10 companies totalling over 2,000 participating performers. Involving three domestic opera companies, the joint production of “Tosca” demonstrated once again how vital collaboration is for the continuation of the operatic art form. The 2009 festival inspired a 2022 repeat, though the latter was more reduced in scale.

Within the cinematic realm, one of the more opera-focused films to feature the city by name is the Huangmei opera film, “Inside the Forbidden City” (1965). It is a film largely unknown to Western audiences due to being entirely in the Chinese language. On the more architectural side, the opera house on the palace’s grounds, named Yueshilou, was once the home of the emperor, his wife, and concubines. Opera within the Forbidden City is multi-dimensional and spans time and space: the overarching theme, however, is one of shared cultural expression. This can be found wherever you look, and the Forbidden City expresses this for Chinese and international audiences alike. Opera and classical music’s place in the city is one of diplomacy, friendship, peace, artistic expression, and a defense of cross-cultural fraternity in the face of difficulty.

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A Story and Its Roots

The film was conceptualized three years prior to the film’s premiere in the form of a song entitled “The Champagne Waltz.” It was written by Con Conrad and Ben Oakland, the former being responsible for other major hits such as “Singin’ the Blues” (1920) and “Ma! He’s Making Eyes at Me” (1928), the latter being colleagues with the likes of Oscar Hammerstein II  and famed author and clarinetist Artie Shaw. The song that inspired the film was a hit of its time. It was recorded by the likes of jazz saxophonist Glen Grey, big band vocalist Kenny Sargent, and even the composer and innovator of the easy listening genre George Melachrino. “The Champagne Waltz” was further immortalized when it was used to score a moment in the seminal cartoon “Popeye the Sailor,” created in 1933. In the “Dance Contest” short (1934), the song provides the diegetic background for Popeye and Olive’s enjoyment at the dancehall. So popular was this short and the song that in 1937, British film director Albert Sutherland, at the time having directed over 20 films since 1925, took up the theme for a film. 

While the film was generally eclipsed by another film that year, “Every Day’s A Holiday” starring famous temptress Mae West as her last Paramount picture, what made the film an inspirational project was its awareness of cinematic trends at the time. Opera films, especially within the Hollywood scene, were not rare but in fact far more ubiquitous than opera-film crossovers and opera-popular culture crossovers are today. Before we had seminal moments and musical duos like Luciano Pavarotti and Aretha Franklin, Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé in concert, and Kristin Chenoweth’s shift into musical theater from a precocious start in opera, and even popular opera groups like the “Three Tenors” (1990-2003), there were several decades where opera singers pursued a Hollywood career while still performing as professional opera performers. Much of the cinematic output of the early 20th century, including William A. Wellman’s “Stingaree” (1934), Ryszard Bolesławski’s compilation film “Metropolitan” (1935), and, most famously, “Casta Diva” (1935) featuring internationally acclaimed Hungarian coloratura Marta Eggerth who famously retired at the age of 99, were star-studded with operatic and cinematic talents from across the world. 

To make a film really sell in the eyes of a spoiled and discriminating audience, it had to have exceptional talent, effective drama, and captivating music. Having entered an unhappy marriage to the “mother” of the flapper movement, actress Louise Brooks, only two years earlier, and being a film director during one of the most economically depressed periods in US history, both Sutherland and Paramount Pictures were in strange times. The studio had a lot riding on its film, they needed it to make money and fast. So precarious was the situation for the studio that in 1935 they had been forced to file for bankruptcy. They had soon come under new management, however, and restarted thanks to the popularity of cartoons like “Popeye” (see any connections yet?), and stars such as Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. All this to say, Paramount had lots of change on their horizon.

Some Thunder Worth Stealing

Sutherland’s desire to have a Metropolitan Opera star as the headliner to the film was not a flippant choice but a highly deliberate one that took into consideration the prevailing trends of the time. It is well-known that many high-profile singers during the first half of the 20th century (and well into the second half) were coaxed into screen careers. Singers like Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, star of the 1951 MGM film “The Great Caruso,” American tenor Mario Lanza in the 1959 film “For The First Time,” American soprano Patrice Munsel in the 1953 fictionalized biopic “Melba,” Italian baritone Tito Gobbi and Italian soprano Elena Rizzieri in the 1949 film “The Glass Mountain,” Italian soprano Natalina Cavalieri in the 1955 film “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World,” and the operatic singers in the 1935 film “A Night At The Opera,” all go to show that the trend of operatic crossovers were not rare but increasingly normalized. Even now, you’ll find stars like Renee Fleming in movies like “The Adventures of Tintin.”

The divide between the cinematic world and the operatic world remains just as obscured today, thanks to film projects that bring operatic dramaturgy to audiences in new and exciting ways. This time, however, it is on opera’s terms, rather than the other way around. From the “opera music video” to operatic cinema experiences, and including opera composers finding their feet in Hollywood such as Erich Korngold and Arnold Schoenberg, the opera world has never been really estranged from the commercial world of entertainment. The two are, rather, in a constant dialogue. However, Sutherland’s capitalization on the opera fad at the time was not entirely innocent, but rather a calculated business decision informed by the cinematic-operatic successes of lyric soprano Grace Moore, best known for her work bringing opera into vogue in popular culture thanks to her participation in films such as Victor Schertzinger’s “One Night Love” (1934). The consciously-drawn parallels between Moore and Swarthout appear to have been obvious to more than just the production companies. According to an article written in the January 1937 issue of TIME magazine,

The perennial and expensive effort to make a Grace Moore out of Gladys Swarthout seemed to have more logic some time ago when Miss Moore was a more important box-office draw. 

The detectable chagrin and stout disregard for Paramount’s ostensible exploitation of Grace Moore’s cinematic fame in the form of their championing of Swarthout is, although justified to some degree given Moore’s bigger success in film, also misguided. Although not equal to Moore’s success on screen, Swarthout did manage to create a strong career of popularizing opera for the masses. A clear example of her public outreach work was her extensive touring career during the 1930s and 1940s, raising national morale during the Second World War. Analogously, Moore also aided the war effort by singing for the French Allied troops at the Paris Opera House in a gala called “Pacifique 45” in July of 1945. The whole theme of the gala was to remind family and troops that the war was not yet finished and thus, Swarthout’s role was a seminal one in raising moral and war-fatigued spirit.

Objectively, it is clear that Paramount did want to capture the success Grace Moore had and which MGM had cashed in on. Unlike Moore, whose operatic successes were of equal proportion with her cinematic career, for Swarthout, her operatic career was larger and far more successful than her cinematic career. She only starred in five films, the last film “Ambush” (1939) being the same year of Moore’s last film, “Louise,” which is the eponymous name of Gustave Charpientier’s Francophile verismo opera and Moore’s personal favorite, and mine as well. 

Paramount’s attempt at becoming the next home for operatic talent looking to make it big on screen was noble but ultimately did not work, despite relying upon a model established by previous movie houses and opera stars-turned actors and actresses. But the problem did not lie in either Swarthout or Moore. Ultimately, these two singers/actresses brought different types of energy to the screen. For Swarthout, her work ethic, steadfast tenacity, and vigorous attention to quality helped her master five languages, while for Moore, her charm, devotion to dramaturgy, and allure made her one of the most important cinematic figures of the American 1930s—so much so that she rivaled the status of male actors like Maurice Chevalier. While Moore was given the “Légion d’honneur,” among other awards, Swarthout was the only woman to have sung for the entire US Congress. Both women were committed to their craft in more ways than one, each living out their purpose with vigor, artfulness, and tact.

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