Though made on a comparatively modest budget of only
$650,000, it was still technologically innovative, featuring the first soundtrack
ever recorded in stereo for a television broadcast. And, running counter to the
movies-to-TV model of the prior two decades, its premiere in U.S. theaters came
11 months after it was exposed to Swedish TV audiences.
I had heard before that a movie had been made of this Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opera, but I had never seen it before. And, I might as well
confess now, I am hardly an opera aficionado, having attended less than 10
productions of any kind over the years.
But, when I saw that the movie would be played near me
in northern New Jersey at the Barrymore Film Center over this past
weekend, I was curious. The idea that Bergman, of all people, with his whole
filmography of Scandinavian gray skies and gloom to match, might have tackled
an opera—well, it struck me as a case of man bites dog.
In other words, this I had to see.
So, what was it like? As I watched, I thought that
Bergman was mounting this production as a holiday from his usual anxiety and
dread. And, with a new year around the corner, I experienced much the same
thing—a revival of spirits that left me continually smiling.
The exterior establishing shot of a grassy outdoor
scene led me to expect something naturalistic, shot on location. But those expectations
were immediately overturned as the camera switched to the inside of a theater.
Instead of a long list of opening credits, the camera
moves throughout the overture to close-ups of faces—and not to the conductor or
orchestra musicians, but to featured audience members, especially a young blond
girl continually highlighted.
To be sure, Bergman and cinematographer panned to
audience members special to them, such as Bergman’s wife and son and
actress-muse Liv Ullmann. But what was striking about this seven-minute
sequence was the sheer variety of faces—men and women of all ages, ethnicities,
and races, even individuals plucked off the street for the occasion.
By the end of the show, contemporary listeners would
have appreciated that Mozart intended this work to be savored by people of all
kinds. In our time, with opera suffering
from the perception that it caters to an aging, elite audience, the opening
sequence can be read as a reminder of the genre’s fundamentally universal
aspirations.
We see the cast and crew onstage and backstage, an
injection of reality into a landscape of fantasy—with a singer, for instance,
suddenly aware of his cue, rushing around, or performers reading another
libretto (Wagner’s Parsifal) or far from it (a “Donald Duck” comic book).
How do you adapt a work meant for the opera house to
very different audiences—television and movie theaters?
For starters, there is the matter of length. The Magic
Flute has been known to stretch to nearly three and a half hours (counting
intermission) in the opera house. Bergman trimmed it back to two hours and 15
minutes, including by omitting Act 2 trios and ignoring Mozart’s Masonic references.
As he recalled in Images: My Life in Film,
Bergman was exposed to this opera as a child, when he "loved to roam
around”:
“One October day I set out for Drottningholm (in
Stockholm) to see its unique court theater from the eighteenth century. For
some reason the stage door was unlocked. I walked inside and saw for the first
time the carefully restored baroque theater. I remember distinctly what a
bewitching experience it was: the effect of chiaroscuro, the silence, the
stage. In my imagination I have always seen The Magic Flute living
inside that old theater, in that keenly acoustical wooden box, with its slanted
stage floor, its backdrops and wings. Here lies the noble, magical illusion of
theater. Nothing is; everything represents. The moment the
curtain is raised, an agreement between stage and audience manifests itself.
And now, together, we'll create! In other words, it is obvious that the drama
of The Magic Flute should unfold in a baroque theater."
In some ways, Bergman was like the title character in
one of his films: “The Magician,” a manufacturer of illusions.
He had hoped to film at Drottningholm Palace Theatre,
one of the few surviving Baroque theatres in the world, but the scenery
"was considered too fragile to accommodate a film crew.”
Upon learning this, the director set about
meticulously reconstructing the stage—including wings, curtains, and wind
machines—in the studios of the Swedish Film Institute. Moreover, the stage dimensions
and the props color tones match the original 1791 premiere in Vienna.
In some ways, sound came in for as much care as image,
with conductor Eric Ericson and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra recording
the score in in an old circus building. Bergman used the “playback” method,
scrutinizing prerecorded music so that lip synchronization and performers met his
exacting standards.
Even with material that was already light and fluffy, Bergman
was unafraid to poke viewers in the ribs. The creature who chases Prince Tamino,
for example, may well be the most sorry, silliest dragon ever put on celluloid;
the three spirits are borne aloft in a flying machine more out of 19th-century
sci-fi than 20th-century aircraft; and periodically, singers hold up
cue cards to prompt audiences to chant along.
Kenneth Branagh attempted his own interpretation of the opera in 2006, but it was widely regarded as inferior to Bergman’s. The latter
won a BAFTA TV Award for Best Foreign Television Programme and was nominated for
a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and for an Academy Award for Best
Costume Design.
That the great Scandinavian film director pulled it
off is something of a miracle. His opera adaptation appeared in the same year
as Ken Russell’s version of The Who’s rock opera Tommy. It’s hard to
imagine more dissimilar approaches to the genre than these two men displayed.
While Bergman’s was sprightly, Russell’s was positively surreal.
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