Festivals Within a Festival

Ring Festival LA is in swing. Cinephiles and connoisseurs of the unusual will not be disappointed in upcoming Festival events.

The triumvirate of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the LA County Museum of Art, and the Goethe Institute will co-present Fritz Lang's brilliant silent film fantasy Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (May 7) and Kriemhild's Revenge (May 8) at LACMA's Bing Theatre. These two films from 1924 fall between the legendary German Expressionist director's Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and Metropolis (1927). The lushly orchestrated soundtrack composed by Gottfried Huppertz evokes Wagner through a late-Romantic lens. This rare film's striking imagery qualifies it as a classic of the silent film era.

Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino (Up, Ratatouille) will explore classical music's influence on animated films hosting "What's Opera, Doc?" at (May 14) at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He will be joined by Oscar-winning animated feature director Pete Docter (Up, Monsters, Inc) and Academy Music Branch Governor Bruce Broughton (Silverado, The Rescuers Down Under). It includes big-screen presentations of such favorite animated shorts as The Rabbit of Seville (1950) and the dancing hippo section of Disney's Fantasia (1940).

Acclaimed British director Tony Palmer, known equally for his documentaries on pop figures (The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa) and portraits of classical artists (Maria Callas, Igor Stravinsky, Yehudi Menuhin), will preside over a weekend festival at UCLA of two of his Wagner-related films presented by The Opera League of Los Angeles (May 22-23). Get ready for controversy - The Tony Palmer-Wagner Film Festival will present the theatrical world premiere of his new documentary The Wagner Family (May 22). Tony Palmer investigates the dark closets of the Wagner family and what he finds is unsettling. As the London Times wrote: "Even Wagner could surely not have predicted just how operatic the saga of his own descendants would turn out to be."

The weekend festivities will also present Tony Palmer's film about the legend of Parsifal, starring Plácido Domingo with music conducted by Valery Gergiev (May 22) and his 7 hour 45 minute film Wagner starring Richard Burton and Vanessa Redgrave. Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson also star in the only instance when these three great actors appeared together. The Los Angeles Times commented that it was "one of the most beautiful films ever made," and Der Spiegel called it "a monumental film...a complete work of art...truly visionary."

American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre (June 4) will offer Apocalypse Now Redux, considered by Francis Ford Coppola to be the definitive version of his 1979 Academy Award-winning film Apocalypse Now. It's a significant re-edit of the original film: "recut, restored, reinvented" as the movie trailer says and includes an additional 49 minutes of material. The soundtrack features music from Wagner's Ring as well as original music by the director's father, Carmine Coppola. The New York Times wrote that Apocalypse Now Redux "grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the restoration of scenes left in the cutting room two decades ago has only added to its sublimity."

In addition to Ring-related cinema offerings, spread throughout Ring Festival LA are unusual offerings that Angelenos would be unable to experience were it not for the Festival. I'd like to highlight a few:

If you missed Wagner's Das Liebesverbot at the USC Thornton School of Music last week you really missed. The three performances before full houses at Bing Theater were the first West Coast performances of this, his second opera, composed in 1836. It has only been performed once before in this country. You can read the LA Times review here.

This past weekend the Verdi Chorus, directed by Anne Marie Ketchum, in its well-attended spring concerts at First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica, explored the connections between an operatic odd couple--Verdi and Wagner. They were in full voice with beautiful solo performances by soprano Erin Wood, among others. Professor Aurelio de la Vega took us through the contrasts and connections between these giants.

This week, among many other events, Occidental College hosts a one-day multidisciplinary symposium (May2). To get some idea of the ingenuity contained in this collaborative Festival, click on this link to see what I call "Wagner-Meets-YouTube-Meets Dramamine," a video composition by Oxy professor Bruno Louchouarn.

 

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