Opera has inspired movies for years. Since the earliest days of sound in films, classical music has been an integral part of countless movies. Even during the days of silent films, the dramatic stories of famous operas have been the basis of movie plots. Although those less familiar with the art form like to make fun of the melodramatic plots, there’s no denying that many operas are based on stories which are dynamic whether on the stage or the screen.
Since the end of the musical’s heyday in the mid-20th century, the film industry has had much less interest in opera music, singers, and stories. However, certain stories continue to attract filmmakers’ attention, such as “The Magic Flute,” a German opera written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791.
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“The Magic Flute” was released in Zurich on Sept. 30, 2022, and throughout Germany on Nov. 17. It features an ensemble cast of German and British Isles actors, most of whom had little or no professional acting experience at the time. It was directed by Florian Sigl, and the screenplay was written by Andrew Lowery.
Tim Walker (Jack Wolfe) is around seventeen when his father dies. Per his dying wish, Tim goes to the Mozart Academy, a famous music school, to train his voice. On the train there, Tim meets a fellow student, instrumentalist Sophie (Niamh McCormack), and they have an immediate chemistry. At the school, Tim feels very insecure about singing in front of the other students and teachers, particularly the disagreeable Dr. Longbow (F. Murray Abraham). The school is about to put on a concert of “The Magic Flute,” and Tim really wants to play Prince Tamino because his father had a special connection to the show. One night, at 3 a.m., Tim feels drawn to the library. He replaces the score of “The Magic Flute” to the shelf from which his father took it years ago. As soon as he does, he travels through the chiming clock into the fantastic realm of the opera as Prince Tamino, where he gains confidence as a singer.
I was surprised by how much actual singing is in this movie. Very little information is available about this film since it was a relatively small production. I knew the story was inspired by the opera, but I didn’t expect it to include multiple complete arias from the Mozart score, albeit in English. While the idea is very interesting, this becomes tedious and weakens the movie, because only a few of the singers have the classical training required to sing opera. Tim’s lack of vocal prowess also weakens the story—it’s hard to take it seriously when all the characters laud his ability. This reminded me of a much older movie which was also based on an opera, “The Tales of Hoffmann” from 1951.
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“The Tales of Hoffmann” is a British film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. This same team made the highly successful “The Red Shoes” a few years earlier, which featured some of the same performers, including famous ballet dancers Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, and Ludmilla Tchérina. Like “Red Shoes,” “Tales of Hoffmann” features multiple classical stage performers, although this one has more opera singers and only a few ballet dancers. “The Tales of Hoffmann” or “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” is a French opera written in 1880 by Jacques Offenbach, based on three short stories by the famous German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann. This movie is not just a musical, though; it’s actually a cinematic opera, featuring English lyrics in place of the original French and a lot of ballet dancing to enhance the story.In the film, the poet Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville) waits at a tavern for his lady love, ballerina Stella (Shearer), after her performance in “The Ballet of the Enchanted Dragonfly.” Little does he know that her note to him was intercepted by his rival, the jealous Councillor Lindorf (Helpmann). While he and a group of students drink, Hoffmann tells stories of his three past lady loves. The first is mechanical doll Olympia (Shearer, voiced by Dorothy Bond), the second is Venetian courtesan Giuletta (Tchérina, voiced by Margherita Grandi), and fatally fragile soprano Antonia (Ann Ayars). Through all his adventures, he is hounded by a series of different nemeses, all of whom look like Lindorf. Is there some connection between these three elusive ladies and his current beloved, Stella?
These movies are very similar in that they both feature extensive excerpts from the scores of famous operas, translated to English. However, the operatic arias in “The Magic Flute” are just musical numbers dispersed amidst dialogue, while the opera score is consistent throughout “The Tales of Hoffmann.” Since the singers are much more classically trained, as is the style of the whole movie, the lyrics fit the music more naturally in “Hoffmann” than in “Magic Flute.” Both stories center around a young male artist, who goes through a series of fantastic romantic adventures before deciding that he truly loves a female artist in his current reality. Both stories dabble in the supernatural and occultism, featuring magicians Dappertutto (Helpmann) in the 1951 and Sarastro (Morris Robinson) in the 2022. The new film is different from “Tales of Hoffmann” and the two earlier adaptations of the same story in that it is an original story with dream-like forays into the world of the opera, rather than a cinematic version of the opera’s actual story.
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“The Magic Flute” was a good idea, but its limited success so far is probably due to some inherent flaws in its conception. It reminded me a lot of cartoons intended to introduce children to classical music, complete with the awkward English lyrics, untrained singers, and unlikely casting of the opera characters. In addition, the Freemasonic subtexts in the opera’s libretto were highlighted and emphasized to a point somewhere between Harry Potter’s witchcraft and Satanic black magic, inspiring some unsettling scenes.If you want to see a very artistic, imaginative movie based on an opera, featuring classical music, trained musicians, and a magical setting, I recommend “The Tales of Hoffmann.” With a star-studded cast of famous ballet dancers as well as opera singers, it’s a fascinating look at the classic arts in the mid-20th century.
