The Paris Opera 2016
Distributed by Film Movement
Produced by Philippe Martin and David Thion
Directed by Jean-Stéphane Bron
DVD, color, 106 min., French with English subtitles
College - General Adult
Music, Business, Opera, Ballet
Date Entered: 10/10/2017
Reviewed by Bonnie Jo Dopp, Librarian Emerita, University of MarylandAn extended behind-the-scenes look at the Paris Opera in its 2015-16 season (opera, ballet, recitals, in two theatre venues), this program has a crazy-quilt patchwork design with an appropriately frantic emotional subtext.
A new music director must deal with the press, budgets, in-house strike threats, an actual national strike, being in a city experiencing coordinated terrorist acts (one at a music concert in a sister theatre), and temperamental star performers. The large opera chorus must commit to a year memorizing new music that employs Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone method of composition and his part sung/part spoken, whispered, and shouted Sprechtstimme. Their wariness when a huge live bull becomes part of the act is understandable. The star of Wagner’s long opera Die Meistersinger falls ill at the last minute and a substitute must be found somewhere in Europe. A children’s orchestra rehearses under a demanding director. Scenes of nervous on-and-offstage situations follow in rapid succession and some of the story lines are picked up later in different order.
A unifying thread follows a superb young Russian bass-baritone, Micha Timoshenko beginning when he auditions for and is selected to enter the Paris Opera Academy for two years. He knows no French and is as new to the backstage workings of the Paris Opera as most viewers of this program are. We grow in understanding along with him. The unshakable dedication of reliable staff (wardrobe, makeup, water carriers for thirsty singers, stage hands) is absolutely necessary for any of the shows to go on. Except for some struggles with intonation on the part of the children, the music heard here is expertly performed but this is not a filmed opera or ballet, except in scenes of rehearsals. How the excellence happens is what interests Swiss filmmaker Bron and his skill in telling that story keeps viewers engaged.