The Magic Flute, Mozart Produced by Roland Emmerich

This classic tale is all about a prince trying to save a princess and it starts with a monster attack. We typically do not see it this way, but Mozart’s most popular opera is a total quest fantasy. Therefore, maybe it isn’t totally inappropriate to combine it with elements of Harry Potter, just slightly goofy. Young Tim Walker does not simply study Mozart’s opera, he journeys into it in Florian Sigl’s The Magic Flute, produced by Roland Emmerich, which is now playing in Los Angeles.

Walker, a Sensitive Andrea Bocelli copycat, has been granted rare permission to join the student body of Hogwarts-like Mozart Academy of Music, because of the recent death of his alumnus father. Before he died, Walker’s father asks him to return the rare Magic Flute manuscript he nicked from the school’s library. He tries to sneak it back his first night there, triggering the mystical portal to the world of The Magic Flute.

Accepting Prince Tamino’s quest, Walker constantly sneaks out of his room at 3:00 to reinsert himself into the opera. His disappearing acts thoroughly confuse his sidekick Papageno, the opera’s comic relief. Meanwhile, in the real world, his flakiness annoys his roommate, Paolo, and his prospective girlfriend, Sophie.

The look of both worlds is quite amazing. The “Potterizing” of The Magic Flute is sometimes quite clever, but Walker really ought to be better prepared for the trials he faces, considering how intently he studies the titular Mozart opera.

Regardless, probably the best part of the film, both in terms of special effects and vocal delivery is the Queen of the Night, played by real deal opera diva Sabine Devieilhe. She definitely rises above the often-awkward-sounding contemporary English translation of Mozart’s libretto.

Nobody else can match her range, but wisely, Jack Wolfe and Niamh McCormack really do not try, as Walker and his potential real-world love interest. Instead, they perform some likable vintage pop. Their romantic chemistry is lightweight, but agreeable.

Great Performances: Fire Shut Up in My Bones

Duke Ellington's opera Queenie Pie was sort of like Orson Welles eternally unfinished Don Quixote. He continued writing and polishing it throughout his life, but he never found the right venue to force him to finish it. Concert recitals have tried piece it together, but it never had the proper premiere it deserved. Today, jazz artists get more respect. In fact, Terence Blanchard became the first black composer to be produced by the Metropolitan Opera, launching their 2021-2022 season. The music is fresh, but Blanchard’s adaptation of Charles W. Blow’s memoir is as tragic as any great opera, with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons. Grown “Charles” returns to his hometown Gibsland, Louisiana to revisit his traumatic childhood abuse in Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which airs tomorrow night on PBS’s Great Performances at the Met.

Gibsland is best known as the nearest town to where Bonnie and Clyde met their untimely demise. Charles has something similar in mind. He has come back with a gun and he is looking for Chester the aptly-named cousin who molested him when he was a young boy. Instead, he finds “Char’es Baby,” the embodiment of his childhood self, who guides him through the memory play. Act 1 culminates with the abuse, whereas act 2 ostensibly shows teenaged Charles “getting on with his life,” by losing his virginity. However, in act 3, we see the abuse still haunts him as a freshman enrolled in Grambling.

Instead of a jazz opera, the Met describes Fire as “an opera in jazz.” Don’t feel bad if that distinction is lost on you. Much of Blanchard’s score is stylistically akin to grand opera of the kind you expect to hear at the Met. Yet, Blanchard’s jazz background is still in there, especially in transitional passages that often a rhythmic bounce that you might even say swings. There are also a number of songs that transparently incorporate elements of the blues and gospel. Yet, ironically, one of the most memorable arias, “Golden Button,” would probably work even better as a Broadway book musical tune, given its lilting melody and endearing lyrics.

Jazz fans should also note musicians Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums, Matt Brewer on bass, and Adam Rogers on guitar supplement the Met orchestra. As a legit jazz rhythm section, they help Met pianist and assistant conductor Bryan Wagorn to really swing the score. Arguably, Blanchard might have found the sweet spot that keeps his jazz supporters tapping their toes, while remaining accessible to the Met’s core audience, without sounding like he is compromising or trying to placate either. (That’s a neat trick.)

A Diva’s Story: When I Rise

Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is not like Bizet’s Carmen or Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. It is hardly one of the evergreens companies stage year after year to satisfy their subscribers’ expectations. However, it played an enormously significant role in the life of mezzo-soprano Barbara Smith Conrad. Her frustrating experience with the Purcell opera forms the central nucleus of Mat Hames’ When I Rise (trailer here), which airs next Tuesday on most PBS stations as part of the current season of Independent Lens.

Conrad is a Texan, hailing Center Point, a small town founded by five freedmen, including her great-grandfather. In 1956, she was also part of the first racially integrated class at the University of Texas in Austin. While not exactly welcomed by everyone on campus, Conrad found a home in the school of music. She made lasting friendships and found her remarkable voice was appreciated and accepted, regardless of her race—or so it seemed. Then she was cast as Dido, which would require her to appear in romantic scenes with the white lead.

When word got out, the segregationist members of the state legislature, led by Conrad’s own representative, Democrat Joe Chapman, threatened cut the university’s funding. Despite the protests of both the Republican and Democrat student organizations, as well as the student body president, the university president obediently rolled over.

Hames briskly covers some of the highlights her career, such as playing Marian Anderson (her greatest role model) in HBO’s Eleanor and Franklin, and becoming one of the world’s foremost interpreters of spirituals. Still, he always returns to University of Texas. Conrad did indeed finish her studies at UT, but her feelings towards her alma mater were clearly always ambivalent. Yet, in Rise’s third act, Conrad returns to Texas and her university for a series of honors recognizing her contributions to the arts and seeking to redress past wrongs. Fittingly, it would be the current representative from Conrad’s former East Texas district, Republican (though not identified as such) Bryan Hughes, who took the lead in the legislature’s ceremonies.

Scrupulously nonpartisan, Rise is more interested in the possibility of redemption and forgiveness than politics (past or present), or even music. Viewers do hear several excerpts from Conrad’s recordings, but Hames favors her spirituals that inspired his title and would probably be more accessible for general audiences.

Regardless, Rise certainly reaches an emotional crescendo as Conrad comes to terms with her past. Hames’ compelling portrait of Conrad’s forceful but grounded personality is also the sort of PR outreach opera needs, given its elitist perception in the popular media. Classy and respectful, Rise is one of the highlights of the current season of Independent Lens, well worth seeing when it airs this coming Tuesday (2/8) on most PBS outlets.

U-Carmen

U-Carmen (e-Khayelitsha)
Produced and Directed by Mark Dornford-Smith
Koch Lorber Films

In addition to its enduring popularity, Georges Bizet’s Carmen has also proved remarkably pliable. For instance, Oscar Hammerstein revamped Bizet’s lyrics for Otto Preminger’s classic film Carmen Jones. Several jazz artists have also interpreted the score, including an underappreciated classic by Barney Kessel. U-Carmen (trailer here), the latest recasting of Bizet’s opera, which shifts the setting to a South African Township and translates the lyrics to Xhosa, is now available on DVD.

U-Carmen was originally developed as a stage production by British-born director Mark Dornford-May for the South African troupe Dimpho Di Kopane (DDK). While the idea of Carmen in Xhosa translation may sound jarring, opera traditionalists will actually be very comfortable with what they hear. There are Xhosa elements in the soundtrack, but by-and-large the orchestrations are traditionally classical. One might expect the linguistic clicks of Xhosa to be distracting, but again Carmen proves to be remarkably elastic.

Pauline Malefane plays Carmen and Andile Tshoni plays her ill-fated policeman lover, Jongi. Both have very impressive voices. One of the biggest tests for U-Carmen is the “Habanera,” and Malefane handles it beautifully. The third (matador) side of the love triangle is largely under-developed, here represented by an expatriate opera singer (often pictured performing in the matador role). Fans of the opera might be disappointed that the “Toreador Song” is not employed as an aria feature for him, instead appearing briefly as a vehicle for the cigarette factory women’s choir in the beginning and late in the film (and as an orchestral background theme).

Perhaps the most joyous music of U-Carmen is the Xhosa chanting celebrating the exiled singer’s homecoming (also heard over the menu titles). It actually makes one wish they had taken more liberties with the music. However, the work that went into the soundtrack was impressive. According to the bonus featurette, the orchestra was 98% South African. Music director Charles Hazelwood explains: “it was a motley bunch of people who had never played together as a unit before, but the upshot of that is it gives the recording of the music for the film a kind of urgency, a kind of danger, because the orchestra was playing, genuinely, like their lives depended on it.”

Even as a lopsided love triangle, most of the elements of Bizet’s opera are recognizably present: the cigarette factory, the barracks, the sick mother, the fortune teller, and the smugglers. While the energy may flag at times, Dornford-May has an impressive eye. It is an interesting attempt to make the old, new again.