Caballe Beyond Music

Wow! This woman has an incredibly beautiful voice. Almost freakishly beautiful. It's just otherworldly.

Caballe Beyond Music is a documentary about the operatic soprano Montserrat Caballe who was born in Spain to a very poor family. The documentary chronicles her career and includes much footage of her singing exquisite arias.

I was very moved by her singing, as well as by her person. Although some people made comments about her being a bit diva-ish, it was pretty clear that she is a warm, happy, loving woman. (On the other hand, she deposited her children with her parents for them to raise so she and her husband could pursue their careers; not the *most* loving things to do. But whatev.)

This is the best opera documentary I've seen yet. I really loved it. Now to amazon to buy some Caballe CDs!

Caballé: Beyond Music (Euroarts, 2003)

Caballé: Beyond Music is a wonderful introduction to Barcelona born Diva Montserrat Caballé. This film explores her life on and off the stage with performance clips ranging from 1965 to 2002, interviews with her contemporaries, friends and family and candid home footage.

I found Caballé charming and vivacious. She exudes a fiery personality and a great deal of humor. I enjoyed her reminiscences of her childhood; the opera house in Barcelona is stunning. Actually this film is a great way to see a number of opera houses. In each setting Caballé talks about her experiences in that particular city.

There are a number of opera greats interviewed and I loved hearing about her collaboration with Queen's Freddie Mercury. A Queen band member had me laughing out loud when he describes Freddie’s initial instinct to tone his act down when on stage with her. Then his astonishment at what it was like to actually share the stage with Montserrat Caballé: “I mean she’s an opera singer, she was up there next to him like a bloody volcano!”

For the first time I had a sense of the power of an operatic pianissimo. Caballé’s controlled quiet singing is utterly gripping.

Opera Hits (Kultur Video, 1999)

Opera Hits (Kultur Video, 1999) is a strange and uneven "greatest hits" DVD. Perhaps I have been spoiled seeing such high quality live performances this year, but this hardly seemed to be crème de la crème.

It certainly is more mainstream than the bizarre Opera Fanatic. Yet I found the film production value sorely lacking. For example, throughout the first number "Largo al factotum" from Il Barbiere di Siviglia clunking footsteps are clearly audible.

There is a very short informational screen between each piece stating the specific opera, the site of the performance and the performers. That helped me identify what I felt were the highlights.

Performances at Teatro alla Scala in Milan get two of my top votes, one for best Divo: Jose Carreras. Carreras sings two pieces from Andrea Chénier with amazing passion and skill! The other pick, this time for best group effort, goes to the Chorus of La Scala performing Verdi's Nabucco. This was really weird and boring to watch – a large number of people wrapped in white swathing standing still, but such controlled and intense music!

The other stand out performance, my favorite Diva of the DVD, is Maria Ewing as Carmen at Glyndebourne festival. The odd bit of staging is the chorus is all smoking cigars. Yes, while they sing?! Weird. I think the gal Diana and I saw sing Carmen at the Open Mike at the Brooklyn Museum modeled her performance on Ewing. It worked for both of them!

Over all the film is a bit of a dud. I expect there must be better out there, I will keep looking (and watching) and let you know.

Making Opera: The Creation of Verdi's La Forza de Destino

Well, although not as problematic as Opera Fanatic, Making Opera: The Creation of Verdi's La Forza de Destino was not exactly wonderful. I mean, I liked it enough, but it really, really dragged for me and I was doing some serious multitasking while it was playing.

Making Opera follows a company putting together an opera from day one to the dress rehearsal 21 days later. There are very few talking heads, just scene after somewhat disjointed scene of rehearsals. It's interesting and boring at the same time.

It was interesting seeing the chorus rehearse, particularly the first time they had a stage rehearsal. It was interesting watching the singers perform their roles sitting down in a room on their first day. Although they focused on the singers, the conductor (Arenas) and the director (Copley), I was most curious about the backstage stuff. They showed all the painstaking work that is done by hand, such as the painting of every little square on the giant wall, and the sewing of the wigs and costumes. One of my favorite moments was during a principals' rehearsal. It was a one of their birthday's and the cast surprised them with a cake. I've never, ever heard such a wonderful rendition of the Happy Birthday song!

There were very long extended scenes of the singing, particularly at the end for the final dress rehearsal, and I found it boring. Maybe I would have liked it better if there were subtitles for the performance parts. The music was absolutely beautiful, but the documentary just didn't feel that compelling or even watchable.

(I thought this moment of the brilliant soprano singing in a tacky cat t-shirt particularly amusing)

(They really need to start making better opera documentaries. I did hear that the Met has one showing now called The Audition)

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December 22, Update from Meridith

Diana is spot on about Making Opera, it is most definitely simultaneously interesting and boring. The quality of the film itself is very low -- the color is off and the picture is grainy.

I thought the singing was quite good. I am not familiar with Verdi's La Forza de Destino and enjoyed the parts of it that were depicted. I would have liked to hear more commentary from the people involved including the singers, the crew and the musicians.

It is very different in feel from Opera Fanatic, but equally strange and amateurish in format and presentation.

Finally, the cat t-shirt is just the tip of the iceberg. There was more bad fashion on this cast and crew of Making Opera than I have seen in one place in a long time. The other female lead sports a metallic applique sweater that is simply hideous and it is a parade of ugly eyeglasses!

Opera Fanatic

(this is one mezzo's response to Zucker's intimations about the sexual proclivities of mezzos)

















(This is an example of the yellow cast to much of the film)


So, Opera Fanatic-- Not sure what to say about this, uh, "singular" documentary.

It chronicles an opera fanatic in his quest to find out what drove the "expressive" singing of opera divas from the 40s & 50s (that is, the divas of his childhood). He manages to get a number of interesting interviews with some very impressive, elegant, quirky, accomplished, and charismatic elderly ladies, and these are juxtaposed with footage of them singing in their heyday. So, that was pretty good.

However, the fanatic himself, Stefan Zucker is really kind of problematic. His voice is almost impossible to get past, and he is the slowest speaker I have ever heard. His fanaticism with opera seems linked to some oedipal issues (his mother and he both were opera singers, and sung many duets together. He said that none of the women he loved as an adult had the emotional range that his mother had) (Also worth mentioning, Zucker achieved the world's record for highest tenor).

Furthermore, his weird sexuality seeps into the film in an unpleasant way. He informs the filmmakers while they are in the car on the way to interview a famous mezzo-soprano, that mezzos are known for their sexual proclivities. To quote: "To judge from accounts of singers I've interviewed, they enjoy kinds of intercourse other women might find painful." (I placed a picture above of the mezzo's retort to this suggestion.). He also tells one woman he interviewed that he felt "an erotic intensity" to her "emanations". Yuck.

Also the film quality was pretty poor. Much footage had a yellow cast to it, and most of it seemed grainy. Not only that, but there were entire chunks of dialogue that weren't subtitled.

Here's what one Netflix reviewer wrote:

"The bad color is surely an accident of inept filming, but the rest reflects the character of interviewer Stefan Zucker, a bloated, simpering prig with tunnel vision about singing technique. The first offense is that Zucker speaks, at all times, in an affected falsetto that is torture to hear. It's a wonder he isn't beaten to a pulp by everyone he dares to address. The second is that he omits any overview of each diva's professional accomplishments during a bygone era and instead hounds them all with the same two questions about the nature of "expressive singing" and the utility of "the chest voice." He writhes appallingly to encourage one diva's twisted wisecrack about a "spanking," gushes that he finds another interview "erotic," and otherwise tries to worm his way into their confidences through flattery and little gifts that they complain about having to accept ("What shall I do with THESE?"). Marcella Pobbe finally gives him a much needed verbal whack by refusing to go along with his "stupid questions," which is probably the highlight of this otherwise unbearable film."