Opera Chic

Woody Allen: Zeffirelli Is Better Than Bergman *

* (as opera director).

Woody Allen -- whose production of Gianni Schicchi just traveled from Los Angeles to Festival di Spoleto where it opens tomorrow night -- gave an interview a couple weeks ago to Italian daily Corriere della Sera where he said a few unsurprising things (for example, that his inspiration for the staging came to him from his beloved Italian comedies by Vittorio de Sica and Pietro Germi from the 1950s and 1960s) and quite a few surprising ones.

The Woodman said that opera and film don't mix very often and that he found Ingmar Bergman's film version of The Magic Flute to be "boring", unlike Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni ("good"). Corriere's journalist correctly points out that Bergman has been a huge influence on Allen and Allen is a huge fan, and that Bergman's Magic Flute is usually considered a masterpiece: "Many people are crazy for his Magic Flute but I never really liked it, it's neither opera nor film. There's a director who's excellent at mixing opera and film: Zeffirelli". Zeffirelli is often panned by critics, the Corriere journalist points out.. "He's a great man of the theater and cinema. One of the few who can make opera accessible to a large audience. His Pagliacci and Cavalleria production -- I love those two operas -- is very exciting. If he takes some liberties he does it as an artist... if you bore them, they'll never be back. It's just like baseball".

Oh, and Placido Domingo, who convinced him to do Gianni Schicchi, wants Allen to direct Così Fan Tutte. Allen, who, in the interview, repeats that for him "life without Mozart is unthinkable", admits that it's a very intimidating opera to direct.

But he's thinking about it.

The Voice Imitator: Oreste Lionello, Woody Allen's Italian Voice, Dies at 81

The bad Italian habit of dubbing foreign films has at least one positive aspect: every once in a while you get to hear a doppiatore who just gets it, perfectly. The tone, the speech candences, the emotion behind the words -- the re-interpretation of a role. It's a very small Italian club -- the late great Ferruccio Amendola who lent his baritone to Pacino and De Niro among others, and Giancarlo Giannini also moonlights as a very successful doppiatore -- and today it has lost one of its greatest members: Oreste Lionello, a very successful TV comedian (his comedy, sadly, was of a brand whose humor completely ecsapes Opera Chic) whose great work will remain his dubbing of Woody Allen, has just passed away.

You don't need to be as big a fan of Woody Allen's as Opera Chic is to recognize that Signor Lionello's work in giving an Italian voice to Woody is one for the ages. Even better than the original? Maybe not. But scarily close. Oreste Lionello was a master of voice work. An example from Deconstructing Harry (Harry a pezzi, in Italian), below (it contains profanity, in Italian -- hence Not Safe For Work if your boss speaks Italian and lacks a sense of humor).  

Woody Allen In Florence Gets The Puccini Award For L.A.'s "Gianni Schicchi"

Woody Allen -- rookie opera director -- is spending the Hanukkah holidays in Italy and has been awarded the 38th Giacomo Puccini Award in Florence, to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the birth of Puccini.

 

O Mio Woodyno Caro: Woody Allen Does Gianni Schicchi, LA Audience Says Yeah

Last night the Woody Allen-directed third of Il Trittico (Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica were directed by William Friedkin) has finally reared its Italian head at Los Angeles Opera and the audience seems to have appreciated the Woodman's first (and probably last, if his recent interviews are any indication) effort in opera direction.

Allen asked Santo Loquasto to design sets that were a cheerful hommage to Italian film comedy of the 1950s and 1960s, all Pietro Germi and Vittorio de Sica influenced, with Florence transformed into Naples or Palermo in a caricature of the old Italian South (Buoso Donati's testament is hidden in a big pot of spaghetti), black clad crying women and sexy Lauretta in a black sottoveste (all the better to flatter Laura Tatulescu's b00bylicious shape) and a Rinuccio explicitly inspired by (Allen's own directions to tenor Samir Pirgu) Marcello Mastroianni's delicious sprezzatura. Is it Puccini? We don't know. But it does sound funny.

Turning Puccini's comedy of errors in a gleeful sendup of old Italian comedies and mafia films is so Woody it isn't even funny (well, it is, of course): too bad Woodino himself didn't show up on stage at the end with the cast and conductor James Conlon to reap the applause (but then, fear of being booed is a very human sentiment, especially if your medium is cinema -- even if once upon a time Allen himself was a standup comedian).

After all, when you think about it, making Gianni a mafioso and playing it all for laughs with old skool movie credits rolling on a screen before the opera begins, and in the end  Woody even tinkers with the libretto so that Gianni's cousin returns to the stage and stabs him, works in a cute "here's my hommage to all the old Italian stuff I've learned to love as a child at the movies" -- it is quite endearing. It's like Radio Days at the opera, with Italians replacing Jews. It's a good idea. Goodness knows professional opera directors -- not self-admitted dilettanti such as Woody -- have worked on shakier, much dumber premises.

Friend of Opera Chic Tim Mangan from the OC Register came, saw and LOL'd:

Allen has turned "Schicchi" into a crisp screwball comedy.

On the other hand, the always indispensable Variety informs us that Thomas Allen is not a relative of Woody's.

Thanks for clearing that up!

"You know, funny to opera people is not funny to the Marx Brothers": Woody Allen Rehearses Gianni Schicchi In L.A.

On the other hand, characters who covet their adoptive daughters are just fine by opera standards -- nothing particularly wrong about that (only it's Strauss, not Puccini, Woody):

He said, “What if we do the Puccini trilogy — it’s three one-acts that are always done together? The first two, Billy Friedkin will direct. You’ll only be responsible for a one-act, a one-hour opera, and it’s funny.” You know, funny to opera people is not funny to the Marx Brothers. But I agreed to do it, because Mark Stern is a friend of mine and Plácido Domingo is someone who I have enormous respect for, and they both assured me I would be able to do it. And I said I would years ago, because these things are planned years in advance. I figured, “Eh, I’ll be dead before it happens. I’m 72. I’m never going to make it to the opera.” But it came around, and next Monday, I start rehearsal. I’ll just do the best I can and then get out of town and let them tar and feather Friedkin.

Tar, feathers, and don't forget the pea soup.

O Mio Woodyno Caro

Woody Allen will direct Gianni Schicchi for the Los Angeles Opera.

No words yet on the staging: Gianni Schicchi in the Upper West Side sounds like, huh, comedy gold -- "NYC è come un albero fiorito"

The two other operas from Puccini's Trittico, will be directed by another film director, William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection).