SCREEN GEMS Stefan Zucker has a passion to bring gone-but-not-forgotten singer films back to life for opera fans of today. Richard Fawkes meets a man with a mission. From Opera Now This summer John Schlesinger is scheduled to start shooting a feature film version of Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail on location in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace, proof that the cinema’s long love affair with opera is far from over. It’s an affair that began at the dawn of cinema, when one of the first full-length features ever made was a 46-minute version of Gounod’s Faust featuring the Royal Italian Opera Company of Paris. It was, of course, silent, but that little inconvenience didn’t stop film-makers from turning out more than a hundred operas during the silent era. The leading lady of the Met, Geraldine Farrar, actually became the first star of the silver screen following her sensational 1915 version of Carmen (which also made the name of director Cecil B. De Mille.) One might have thought that the arrival of sound in 1927 would have given Hollywood just the boost it needed to make some classic opera films. Paradoxically, it promptly turned its back on the genre and when opera stars were signed up, initially to add a bit of class to musicals, it was almost exclusively in vehicles where they might get to sing an aria or two but that was all. During the 30s, 40s and 50s it was left to European film-makers to explore the possibilities of opera on the screen and many of the great singers were lured into the film studios. Artists such as Tauber, Gigli, Kiepura, Gobbi and Schipa became household names through films rather than the operatic stage. Some of these old films turn up occasionally on television but if you really want to see them, the most obvious starting point is the catalogue of the Bel Canto Society of New York. The Bel Canto Society was the brainchild of tenor Stefan Zucker but it didn’t start out to be a film distributor. Zucker, billed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s highest tenor for singing an A above top C in alt altissimo for 3.8 seconds in 1972, is fascinated by old singers. “Ever since I was in my teens I’ve had an interest in stylistic practices and vocal technique,” he explains. His own vocal technique, which enables him to sing so high, is, he claims, one used by Rossini’s favourite tenors. “It was invented in the 1770s by a tenor called Giacomo David who set out to rival the castrati in virtuosity and was the first tenor to succeed in that. He invented a vocal method involving pelvically controlled breathing and placement of the voice at the top of the head. Although most vocal methods in the nineteenth century involved placement, as do many today, one doesn’t find the particular placement he advocated any more. When he grew older he founded an opera school in Bergamo that became known as a tenor factory. From it came forth a number of celebrated tenors, among them his son Giovanni David, who went on to become a leading Rossini tenor, and another Rossini tenor, Andrea Nozzari, who became one of the teachers of Bellini’s favourite tenor, Rubini.” Later in the 19th century the technique lapsed, kept alive only by a handful of singers who passed it on to their pupils. One of these included the soprano Rosina Wolf, Zucker’s mother, who taught him. “So I can claim a direct line back through Rubini to David, although I’m the last of the line to use this particular technique.” Zucker formed the Bel Canto Society to stage bel canto operas. Their first production was of Bellini’s I Puritani and in 1972 they staged the first performance ever of Bellini’s fourth version of Adelson e Salvini (in which Zucker sang his top A). As a result of interest in that performance, the company was put under contract to RCA but that didn’t work out and Zucker ended up forming his own label. “In the late seventies and early eighties we put out LPs for ourselves and for others of, for the most part, rare repertoire, including Rossini’s Rivals: Music by Then-Famous, Now-Obscure, Italian Composers.” The Society continued to promote operas and concerts and then, to supplement their income, began to issue live performance recordings. In 1986, video performances were added to the list. Over the past ten years Zucker has issued some eight hundred titles, with about 260 currently in the catalogue. “For a time we put out silent movies not involving opera singers and even early Hollywood films, but we thought that departed too much from what we wanted to be and a lot of other companies began to release that kind of material so we discontinued it. Besides I was simply overwhelmed by all the work involved.” The current catalogue contains some real gems, from Hollywood epics like Carnegie Hall with appearances by Risë Stevens and Ezio Pinza, to Evensong, an absorbing British film based on the life of Nellie Melba, starring Evelyn Laye as the prima donna who doesn’t know when to quit and the exciting Conchita Supervia as the rising star who supplants her. And it’s not all films. There are a number of early television broadcasts of operas and recitals containing such artists as Björling, Nilsson, Callas, Tagliavini, Gedda, Vickers, Wunderlich, Corelli, Del Monaco—the list goes on. Famous though many of these films are, all traces of a master, and sometimes even of prints, have frequently vanished. Zucker scours museums, libraries and official sources looking for clues to the whereabouts of operatic material. He also deals with private collectors, but perhaps his best leads come from word-of-mouth. As part of his desire to publicise old singers he presented a radio programme called Opera Fanatic on the Columbia University station and now edits a magazine of the same name whose readers have been particularly helpful in locating lost films. Because some of these films come, literally, from out of the attic, the quality is extremely variable. Zucker goes to a lot of trouble to improve what is often poor quality and the results are quite remarkable, especially the sound. “Many of the pre-war films were done live. Lip-synching did not exist until 1935 and often one finds the sound on films of the period is better than on recordings because film sound was relatively advanced. The sound on the 1942 Italian film Rossini  compares very favourably to the sound quality of records of that time.” Are there still gems hidden under beds that Zucker would like to get his hands on? “I’ve got an immense wish list. I want to put out all the films of Gigli, of Schipa, of Tauber, of Kiepura, of Eggerth—the list goes on. We want to document the film output of all the opera singers of that time. It’s wildly unlikely we’ll ever reach that goal since some of the films probably don’t survive, although in some cases we have come up with films thought no longer to exist. I Sing for You Alone  starring Tito Schipa is a case in point. It was filmed in three versions, English, French, Italian. We’ve found the English and French but not, so far, the Italian.” Distributing these films has not made Zucker rich. “We have to subsidise some of the more obscure titles with more popular ones such as the Corelli Forza del Destino. Among my personal favourites is the film Rossini, but the performers are long dead and most of them were unknown outside Italy even in their heyday, so sales of a title like that are small. Other companies that used to put out similar material have stopped simply because there’s not enough money in it. We’re a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation and we’re content to survive to enable us to put out more titles and do some concerts. I cherish much of this material and go to great lengths to find it, restore it and present it. Putting out rare treasures has become something of a mission.”

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