From Richard Wagner and George Lucas to Alfred Hitchcock and Maria Callas, Schroeder provides a fascinating account of the entire absorbing history of the interdependence of opera and film, demonstrating how opera can be found lurking in the background of a wide range of films.The allure of opera to cinema early in the century held up through the silent era, into sound films, through the golden age of movies, and into the most recent approaches to moviemaking. Cinema's Illusions, Opera's Allure explores the numerous ways - some predictable, some unexpected, and some bizarre - that this has happened.
During my childhood in the 1950s, curbed by a strict religious upbringing, I did not go to movies. No edict, though, prevented me from attending opera, and it so happened that I saw Verdi's Aida, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus before I ever went to a movie. In fact, nothing stopped me from seeing Carmen, Salome (a solid piece on a biblical subject, one could surmise), Don Giovanni and even Lulu, but on the other hand Heidi, Bambi and Quo vadis? remained taboo. I grew up with a delightfully distorted view of things, and when I first rebelled and went to a movie, not finding the waywardness I had been sheltered from disappointed me. In the blockbusters which initiated me to the movies in the late 1950s and early 60s, I discovered something not very different in scope from the operas I already knew so well.
The old principle of prohibition inducing unbridled desire worked in my case in the extreme: deprived in my youth of cinema, I have indulged movie going since my late adolescence with unrestrained passion. Entering a movie house has never lost its attraction because, even after being thrown out of the church in my youth, it still seems slightly transgressive. At the same time my enthusiasm for opera remains undiminished, fueled at one time by an aspiration to be a singer, and then by a life as a writer and lecturer on music. My vocal training did not result in a career in opera, but it opened some alluring possibilities for comparing opera and cinema that would not otherwise have occurred to me.
I am very happy to acknowledge a number of people whose unswerving or in some cases indirect assistance deserves my thanks. Since 1994 I have taught a class on film and music, open to students of all disciplines, and they take this class because they love movies. Through lively discussions inside and outside of class, I have learned much from these avid filmgoers. Some of the ideas for this book emerged during the seconds before attempting to answer dismayed questions or sharp comments, as well as during the congenial moments of shared enthusiasm. While I acknowledge the work of numerous authors throughout the book, one stands out especially, and that is Ken Wlaschin, whose encyclopedic Opera on Screen (Los Angeles: Beachwood Press, 1997) has proved extremely useful to me with its wealth of information on the numerous ways that opera has touched cinema. I often needed exactly the kinds of lists and details that Wlaschin provides, and I am much indebted to him for compiling this type of guide.
My visits to the Film Stills Archive at the Museum of Modern Art in New York were very pleasant thanks to assistance from Terry Geesken. In facilitating the reproduction of illustrations she went well beyond the call of duty, and I am most grateful to her for doing this so graciously.
The experiences of cinema and opera should be shared with someone equally addicted to both, and since 1977 my accomplice has been my wife Linda Schroeder. She frequently sees things that I miss, and, as a musician of the highest order, she also has an uncanny ability to hear. I would find it difficult to imagine writing a book without her active interest in the subject, lively discussion, reading and rereading of the drafts, and I cannot thank her enough.
