Review: Jean Cocteau/Philip Glass: La Belle et la Bête

I first saw Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête many years ago on the big screen and was completely enchanted. And recently a friend loaned me a copy of Philip Glass' opera of the same title, which Glass composed to be performed with the film, and which I enjoyed thoroughly. When I had an opportunity to get a DVD that included both, I pounced. (The joke is that I finally bought a DVD that wasn't in Japanese -- it's in French.)

La Belle et la Bête is Cocteau's adaptation of the fairy tale by Mme. Leprince de Beaumont, about a young woman, Belle, who goes to live with the Beast to save her father, who stumbled onto the Beast's domain on his way home from an unsuccessful trip to salvage his business. Remembering his youngest daughter's only request, he plucks a rose and his fate is sealed: he must die or send his daughter to live with the Beast in his place. (His two older daughters, mercenary monsters both, asked for jewels and brocades.) He returns home and tells his story, and Belle, filled with guilt that her modest request had endangered her father's life, sneaks away on the Beast's enchanted horse.

The film is, to put it quite simply, magical. There's an element of surreality here that, it occurs to me, is basic to fairy tales. The white stallion with his sparkly mane, the doors that magically open, those are pretty standard. The bare arms that serve dinner and that hold candelabra that light themselves, and the sculptured heads that come to life, those are a little out of the ordinary, as is the sort of fuzzy boundary between inside and outside in many of the sets, most particularly Belle's bedroom at the Beast's mansion.

Visually, this one's scrumptious. I've always been fond of black-and-white as a visual medium, and this is just beautiful, with rich shadows, finely detailed highlights, and beautifully modeled grays. It's also full of wonderful tableaux and solo shots that are masterfully composed. This is the restored version released in 2003 by Criterion Collection, and they did a bang-up job: it's clean, smooth, and a joy to look at.

Both Josette Day as Belle and and Jean Marais as the Beast bring the characters to life (although the acting style is, in some places, rather broader than we're used to these days, but it's a fairy tale, after all), and it's Belle's growing acceptance and finally love of the Beast that is the core of the story. It's very well done, subtle and circumspect.

I elected to watch with Philip Glass' opera as the soundtrack, rather than the original with Georges Auric's score (which, on sampling a few bits, has also been beautifully restored). I have to say, the experience is even more magical than I remember the original film. Although the synchronization is not perfect, it's pretty close, and the music itself reflects the fairy tale quality of the story. If you're expecting the Philip Glass of serial minimalism and driving, repetitive phrases that sound like Balinese gamelan, be reassured: this is not that. Yes, the rhythms are there, but not obtrusive, and Glass has tied them to the action of the film. This is Glass from the mid-1990s, much freer and more engaging than the Glass of the mid-1970s.

The set comes with a wealth of features and extras, including a booklet (which I think one must necessarily designate as "lavishly illustrated") with the full film credits, an essay by Cocteau, an excerpt from Francis Steegmuller's biography of Cocteau, the original story, and notes on the restoration. (Strangely enough, the booklet doesn't discuss Glass' opera at all.) The disc itself includes commentaries by Arthur Knight and Sir Christopher Frayling; interviews with Henri Alekan, director of photography, and Hagop Arakelian, the makeup artist; the original trailer and the restoration trailer; a documentary on the restoration, "Screening at the Majestic," the theater where Cocteau viewed the rushes, including reminiscences from Alekan, Marais, and Mila Parely ("Felicie") at the locations used for the film, with narration from Cocteau's diaries. You can view the film either with the original soundtrack or the opera, and depending on your decision, you have the option of the movie subtitles, the opera subtitles, or no subtitles. (It's sort of amazing how much you can pack into one DVD.)

Yes, this is absolutely highly recommended with no reservations whatsoever.

(Criterion Collection, 2003)

Review: Richard Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen

You're probably wondering why it took me so long to recycle this one. You have no idea how many reviews I've got in my files.

Richard Wagner's great Ring cycle actually began as an opera about the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, whom Wagner mythologized into the Siegfried of the Germanic mythical cycle of the magical ring forged by a dwarf from gold stolen from a god (in this case, the Rhine River). (The parallel Scandinavian cycle, Volsungasaga names him Sigurd and takes its own title from his father's name, Volse -- or, in Wagner's version, "Wälse.") He began with "Siegfried's Death," which became Götterdämmerung, and then, as he realized that the audience was going to need more background, worked backward in his story outlines. He actually began composing the music in 1853, but left off in 1857 to write Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The whole cycle was completed in 1874, but not performed in its entirety until the completion of the theater built to Wagner's specifications at Bayreuth in 1876. I think perhaps the only thing more ambitious than the creation of such a cycle is the actual attempt to perform it.

Frankly, if you want a plot summary, look up the cycle or the individual operas in Wikipedia or someplace. What is most important about this cycle is that, whatever you may think of Wagner or his music, whatever you have heard from others or whatever your own experience has been, what he put into these four operas is simply everything that matters in human life on earth: trust, betrayal, honor, integrity, love, freedom, responsibility, the uses and misuses of power, all of human life in both its light and dark sides. And the music is without challenge among the most compelling and beautiful ever written.

Clemens Krauss is not a conductor of whom I had heard very much, perhaps because he died relatively young, in 1954, shortly after this Ring was taped. I picked this one for several reasons. I have Solti's recording on vinyl, which was the first complete recording to be issued, and it has always been my standard. Most of the cast is the same in this one, with some notable exceptions: Astrid Varnay, about whom I had heard good things, sings Brünnhilde, and she is an eye-opener. It's a brilliant performance, more intimate than Nilsson's later renderings and a stronger, more capable voice than that of Gwyneth Jones, who is the other Brünnhilde of whom I have strong memories. Ramon Vinay, as Siegmund, and Regina Resnick, in the days before she moved down to mezzo, as Sieglinde, are perfectly matched, and Vinay brings a dark, understated quality to his rendering that not only adds a new dimension in Act I of Walküre, but turns the end of Act II, the entire Todesverkundigung, into one of the most heartbreaking scenes I've ever heard, fully on par with Hans Hotter's unmatched performance of the "Leb' wohl" at the end of Solti's recording of the opera.

Hotter in this recording is at the peak of his vocal power, and it's an education to follow him through the brash, arrogant young god of Reingold through the more sober lord of heaven forced to make the right decision in Walküre, to the doomridden god at the end of the cycle who knows he no longer has any control over events. In Solti's recording (in which the role in Reingold was sung by George London) Hotter's voice was pretty much gone, but his ownership of the role was such that his acting not only carried him through but put his performance on a level seldom achieved by mortals. I'm not sure which I prefer.

Gustav Neidlinger owned the role of Alberich, the dwarf who started the whole thing, pretty much throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. He delivers all the power the role demands, and in the later operas he is chilling, dark and threatening; one has a sense that the lid is barely on a creature who has become nothing but a walking obsession. It's in the Reingold Alberich that the most marked differences appear. He is near-perfect in this recording, but in Solti's later version he has completely unhinged quality in the scene in which Wotan takes the Ring from him -- he is absolutely spitting venom, and the final line of his curse becomes a shriek. Totally scary.

The other major member of the cast who needs comment is, of course, Siegfried. Wolfgang Windgassen, who for me has always been "the" Siegfried, was an innovation when this recording was made. If you've ever heard any of the recordings of the great Heldentenor of the 1930s and 1940s, their voices are somewhat heavier, "meatier." Windgassen projects an amazingly youthful sound, energetic, clear, lighthearted, bumptious and even mischievous. Robert Levine, who wrote the very informative notes, comments that he missed a beat in the forging scene but recovered quickly -- so quickly that I can't find it when I listen.

One thing that I want to stress here, and I think this holds true of Wagner's operas in general: you can get away with singing a role in Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, even Mozart. You can't just sing it in Wagner. You have to act it: Wagner called his works "music dramas," and the emphasis is evenly divided. So, in addition to their excellent singing, these people are all consummate actors, and that's something that catches you time and time again throughout these operas.

Which leads to an observation about the recordings themselves: yes, they are live, from the 1953 Bayreuth Festival. The sound quality is pretty good, although there are some signs of age here and there. Frankly, I've got "vintage" reissues that are much worse. It seems to be the larger orchestral passages that suffer from the limited tonal range sometimes evident in early recordings.

And finally, the guiding force behind all this. Krauss seems to have taken what is best about all the other well-known conductors of Wagner and put it together in an amazing Ring. He brings all of Solti's majesty, von Karajan's febrile enegy, Levine's intelligence and Furtwängler's darkness, and adds his own intimate humanity. While I might prefer some portions, particular scenes perhaps, of other recordings because of a certain characterization or vocal quality, overall this one makes every other recording (and the couple of live performances) I've heard also-rans. The version I have is a fourteen-CD reissue with stunning Art Deco-inspired illustrations by John Martinez, the whole is very compact and beautifully designed. The booklet is also beautifully done, with a design by Modesty Marie Sablan incorporating Martinez' illustrations, Robert Levine's essay, and clear synopses of each opera by Bill Parker. You can also view a complete libretto with English translation at www.allegro-music.com/opd/ringlibretto.

PS -- this is also one of the less expensive sets available -- as of this writing, about $80 new at Amazon, and it's worth every penny.

(Orfeo d'Oro, 2010 [recorded live at Bayreuth Festspielhaus, 1953])

Culture Break: Philip Glass' "Satyagraha," Act II

Or part of it, at least. Satyagraha is my other favorite Glass opera. I was trying to find a clip of the final soliloquy, but the ones I found on YouTube are all static clips, not excerpts from a live performance. (Not that performances of Glass' operas are particularly lively anyway.)

At any rate, this is one of the more engaging (and livelier) sequences: