The art of singing

Opera for the VCR

by Lloyd Schwartz

Enrico Caruso died before sound came to film, but the tenor was so popular he actually made a silent movie. So now in this new home video, The Art of Singing: Golden Voices of the Century (NVC Arts), you can see him in Pagliacci. Caruso turns up again in a poignant vignette filmed in 1932 of the Italian coloratura Luisa Tetrazzini (after whom chicken Tetrazzini was named). She was then 61 and well past her vocal prime. We watch her listening to a phonograph recording of her old partner, and she begins to sing along with him.

This video cornucopia shows us what many of the greatest opera singers looked like when they sang -- or at least lip-synched. Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Rise Stevens talks about how in the movie of The Chocolate Soldier, after she recorded her music, MGM made her sing an octave lower when she did the synchronization so that her face would appear less distorted. There are some interesting cross-references. Fyodor Chaliapin, the great Russian bass, whose most famous role is Boris Godunov, sings a Jacques Ibert song from a 1933 French movie version of Don Quixote directed by G.W. Pabst. Later, Ezio Pinza, who's probably best known for singing "Some Enchanted Evening" in the original Broadway production of South Pacific, is shown in a clip from the movie biography of impresario Sol Hurok, Tonight We Sing, in which he plays Chaliapin singing the Coronation Scene from Boris.

One standout is the brilliant Spanish coloratura mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia, who plays a glamorous opera singer named Baba L'Etoile in a British film called Evensong. She sings Musetta's Waltz, and her face is as captivating and animated as her voice. Another remarkable selection is the screen test that the great Italian-American soprano Rosa Ponselle did for MGM. As Carmen, a role she'd sung at the Met, she looks like a movie star. I guess MGM didn't think so. Her spoken comments about playing Carmen with "a stiletto between my teeth" are also delightful.

There are 27 opera stars in all on this video. Some of them, like baritone Giuseppe de Luca, who sings Figaro in a 1929 Vitaphone short, and Lawrence Tibbett, a dashing toreador, show surprising vitality as actors. Some hardly act at all, like tenors Tito Schipa and Beniamino Gigli, or Leontyne Price as Aida, or Renata Tebaldi (pictured above) and Jussi Bjorling, who are shown in a rare TV appearance (they're introduced by Charles Laughton). They're embarrassingly mature for Puccini's reckless young lovers in La boheme, yet their voices -- especially Bjorling's (Tebaldi's voice ominously hints at later problems with pitch) -- carry all the conviction they need.

Maria Callas aficionados will want to see the two brief, recently discovered clips from her famous Lisbon Traviata. Unfortunately, you can barely make out her face. But even a glimpse of her slumping posture says a lot about how she acted what some people think was her greatest role. And it's part of a good sequence in which conductor Nicola Rescigno talks about working with her and her attitude toward this role.

This partly frustrating find is followed by one of the most powerful operatic performances on film, Callas in the second act of Tosca, with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia, filmed live at Covent Garden in 1964. (On a PBS fundraising program called Great Moments in Opera, there's an even more astonishing clip of Callas singing Tosca's aria "Vissi d'arte" on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 -- the earliest filmed record of her I've ever seen.)

If you already know opera, you'll be thrilled with what's likely to be a first look at some of these singers. If you don't, this is a good way to see and hear some of the past greats.