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‘The phantom of the Opera’: the lost voice of opera in silent film

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Michal Grover-Friedlander
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Extract

Film's attraction to opera began not with the technical possibility of synchronising the operatic voice with the image, but earlier, in the silent era. In the New York Times of 27 August 1910 Thomas Edison declared: ‘We'll be ready for the moving picture shows in a couple of months, but I'm not satisfied with that. I want to give grand opera.’ What did silent film seek in opera? Would a silent film of or about opera have any meaning? What are the possibilities for silent opera? How would a mute operatic voice appear in film?

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , July 1999 , pp. 179 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1 Quoted in Tambling, Jeremy, Opera, Ideology, Film (New York, 1987), 42 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

2 Cavell, Stanley, ‘Opera and the Lease of Voice’, in A Pitch of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1994), 136.Google Scholar

3 Opera's novel relationship with film occurs concurrendy with opera's own requestioning of its relation to traditions, and to shifting meanings of the operatic. See Boulez, Pierre, ‘Opera Houses? Blow them up’, Opera (06, 1986), 440–50;Google ScholarPleasants, Henry, Opera in Crisis: Tradition, Present, Future (New York, 1989);Google ScholarSutcliffe, Tom, Believing in Opera (Princeton, 1996);Google ScholarGrover-Friedlander, Michal and Friedlander, Eli, ‘Opera’, in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics, 4 vols., ed. Kelly, Michael (Oxford, 1998).Google Scholar

4 See Tambling, , Opera, Ideology, Film (see n. 1), chapter 2: ‘Film aspiring to the condition of opera’, 41–67Google Scholar, for a discussion of the various explanations of film's attraction to opera. Tambling mentions a few prima donnas who were lent to silent film, but does not account for their silence. The scope of the present article does not permit a discussion of soundfilms dealing retrospectively with the relation of silent film and opera: e.g. Fellini's E la nave va, The Marx brothers', A Night at the Opera, and, in a certain sense Pasolini's Medea. See Friedlander, Michal Grover ‘Nostalgia for Opera in Cinema's Remembrance of Silent Film’, in Between Opera and Cinema, ed. Theresa, Rose and Joe, Jeongwon (Garland Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

5 Opera, Ideology, Film, 48, 55.Google Scholar

6 Few films in the twenties had musical scores written specifically for them. One example is Satie's musical score for Entr'acte Cinématograpbique, dir. René Clair (1924). For a thorough discussion of the music accompanying silent film see Marks, Martin, Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies 1895–1924 (Oxford, 1997).Google Scholar There has been litde research conducted on early films of operas. For films of operas through to 1906 see Ibid., 258 n.31. For special problems of compiling music for opera films see Tambling, Opera, Ideology, Film, 72–4; For a recent analysis see Levin, David J., Richard Wagner. Fritz Lang, and the Niebelungen: The Dramaturgy of Disavowal (Princeton, 1998).Google Scholar

7 For music's functions in film see Gorbman, Claudia, Unheard Melodies; Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, 1987).Google Scholar

8 The Jazz Singer (1927) is considered by most scholars to be the first talking film, achieved mostly through synchronising song, and a plot about competing styles of song. Even so, the film is for the most part still silent. See Marks, Martin, ‘The Sound of Music’, especially 248–55;Google Scholar and Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ‘Sound Cinema 1930–1960’, 207–19, both in The Oxford History of World Cinema ed. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (Oxford, 1996).Google Scholar

9 See the interpretation of silence, and the relation of the operatic voice to speech, in Cavell, Stanley, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Cambridge, 1979), especially chapter 19: ‘The Acknowledgement of Silence’, 146–60; and ‘Opera and the Lease of Voice’ (see n. 2) where he writes: ‘We could almost take the blatant conventionality of opera as meant to call into question the conventions or conditions making civil discourse possible — the pace, the distance, the pitch, the length, at which literal speech is supposed to take place — as though some problem had arisen about speaking as such’, (p. 136). From the opposite perspective CavelJ also writes that film raises questions fundamental to opera like ‘who sings?’ and ‘what is singing?’ ‘what causes it?’ (Ibid., 135).Google Scholar

10 For example, such an interpretation of song as leading to the limit of vocal expression and of signification in language is presented in Kierkegaard's, Soren discussion of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Either-Or, vol. I, II, trans. Lowrie, Walter (Princeton, 1944/1971);Google Scholar as well as in Nietzsche's, Friedrich understanding of the essential Dionysian face of opera as an inheritance of Greek tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York, 1967). See below for the Lacanian conception of the limit of and the quest for the human voice.Google Scholar

11 ’The Grain of the Voice’ (1972) in Barthes, Roland, Image—Music—Text, trans. Heath, Stephen (New York, 1977), 179 89. Mladen Dolar argues that there is a difference between Barthes's and Lacan's concepts of the materiality of the voice.Google Scholar See Dolar, Mladen, ‘The Object Voice’, in, Gaze and Voice as Love Objects ed. Salecl, Renata and Zizek, Slavoj (Durham, North Carolina, 1996), 7–31, especially 10.Google Scholar

12 For a thorough account of filmed operas see Evidon, Richard, ‘Film’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Sadie, Stanley (London, 1992/1998), vol. II, 194–200; and Tambling, Opera, Ideology, Film (see n. 1).Google Scholar

13 The Phantom of the Opera (1925) based on the novel by Leroux, Gaston, The Phantom of the Opera (1911). Universal Production, directed by Rupert Julian with Lon Chaney as the Phantom and Mary Philbin as Christine.Google Scholar

14 Adorno, Theodor and Eisler, Hanns, Composing for the Films (London, 1994, first published, Oxford, 1947).Google Scholar Žižek also renounces the notion of harmonious complementarity between sight and sound. The beginning of sound film does not alter the fundamental relationship between the visual and auditory dimensions, as voice functions as voice object for the visual. The effect of the addition of the soundtrack was not a closer imitation of reality, but rather an autonomisation of the voice. ‘The moment we enter the symbolic order [speech], an unbridgeable gap separates forever a human body from ‘its’ voice. The voice acquires a spectral autonomy, it never quite belongs to the body we see, so that even when we see a living person talking, there is always some degree of ventriloquism at work: it is as if the speaker's own voice hollows him out and in a sense speaks ‘by itself’, through him.’ ‘ ’I Hear you with My Eyes’; or The Invisible Master’, in Gaze and Voice as love Objects, ed. Salecl, and Zizek, (see n. 11), 92.Google Scholar For other accounts of the loss inflicted on film with the achievement of synchronised speech see Arnheim, Rudolf, Film as Art (Berkeley, 1957; rpt. 1966);Google ScholarEisenstein, Sergei, Film Form [and] the Film Sense, trans, and ed. Leyda, J. (New York, 1957);Google ScholarLawrence, Amy, Echo and Narcissus: Women's Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema (Berkeley, 1991);Google ScholarAltman, Rick, ’, Yale French Studies 60 (1980), 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Silverman, Kaja, ‘Lost Objects and Mistaken Subjects: A Prologue’, in The Acoustic Mirror The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington, 1988), 5, 2.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 9.

17 Bazin, Andre, What Is Cinema? trans. Gray, Hugh (Berkeley, 1967);Google ScholarMetz, Christian, The Imaginary Signifier Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. Britton, Cecilia, Williams, Annwyl, Brewster, Ben and Guzzetti, Alfred (Bloomington, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Comolli, Jean-Louis, ‘Machines of the Visible’, in The Cinematic Apparatus, ed. Lauretis, Teresa de and Heath, Stephen (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

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19 Adorno, and Eisler, , Composing for the Films (see n. 14), 75. For related notions see Cavell, The World Viewed, chapter 19: ‘The Acknowledgement of Silence’, 146–61.Google Scholar

20 For the presentation of other positions regarding the advent of speech in film see Prendergast, Roy, Film Music: A Neglected Art. A Critical Study of Music in Films (New York, 1992), chapter 1: ‘Music in the Silent Film’, 3–18.Google Scholar

21 Žižek, on the other hand, opposes scream and song in The Phantom of the Opera: the song's power is in its resonance with the maternal voice, whereas the (vocalised) scream is an entrance into the community, a horrific reaction to the enjoyment. Žižek opposes the silent scream with the scream of ‘release, of decision, of choice, the scream by means of which the unbearable tension finds an outlet: we so to speak, ‘spit out the bone in the relief of vocalization.’ ‘Why does the Phallus Appear?’ in Enjoy Your Symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (New York, 1992), 117.Google Scholar Žižek mentions ‘the most famous scream in the history of cinema’: the scream of the mother in Battleship Potemkin, ‘its entire effect is … based on the fact that we do not hear her scream’ (Ibid.). On the cry in cinema see also Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror (see n. 15), especially 77.

22 See also Žižek, ‘an image can emerge as the placeholder for a sound that doesn't yet resonate but remains stuck in the throat … A scream which is silent marks the moment at which the voice fails, we hear it with our eyes. It is horrifying to hear beyond visual representation, the blind spot, to hear with our eyes, to see the silence … it stands for death.’ ‘Why does the Phallus Appear?’ 117.

23 Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror An Essay on Abjection, trans. Roudiez, Leon (New York, 1982);Google ScholarRosolato, Guy, ‘La Voix’, in Essais sur le symbolique (Paris, 1969), 287–305;Google ScholarSilverman, The Acoustic Mirror (see n. 15);Google ScholarChion, Michel, La Voix au Cinéma (1982; rpt. Paris, 1993);Google ScholarYampolsky, Mikhail, ‘Voice Devoured: Artaud and Borges on Dubbing’, trans. Joseph, Larry, October, 64 (Spring 1993), 57–77.Google Scholar See also discussions of the psychoanalytic voice in relation to music in Abbate, Carolyn, ‘Debussy's Phantom Sounds’, this journal, 10 (1998), 67–96;Google ScholarTambling, , Opera, Ideology, Film (see n. 1), 51;Google Scholar and his ‘Towards a Psychopathology of Opera’, this journal, 9 (1997), 263–80.Google Scholar

24 For accounts of the phonocentric tradition and its undermining see for instance Stanley Cavell, A Pitch of Philosophy (see n. 9)Google Scholar; Dolar, Mladen, ‘The Object Voice’ (see n. 11), 7–31; Slavoj Zizek, ‘ ‘I Hear You with My Eyes‘’ (see n. 14); Kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror (see n. 15); Jacques Lacan, L'angoisse (1962–63), unpublished seminar;Google ScholarAgamben, Giorgio, Language and Death: The Place of Negativity (Minneapolis, 1991);Google ScholarSpivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, translator's preface, in Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology (Baltimore, 1976), ix–lxxxvii;Google ScholarCuller, Jonathan, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, 1982);Google ScholarAbbate, Carolyn, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1991);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and her ‘Debussy's Phantom Sounds’ (see n. 23); and ‘Opera; or the Envoicing of Women’, in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship ed.Solie, Ruth (Berkeley, 1993);Google ScholarKristeva, , Powers of Horror (see n. 23).Google Scholar

25 Dolar, , ‘The Object Voice’ (see n. 11), 15.Google Scholar

26 Zizek, , ‘I Hear You with My Eyes’ (see n. 14), 92.Google Scholar

27 Poizat, Michel, The Angel's Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera, trans. Denner, Arthur (Ithaca, 1992),Google Scholar and his La Voix du Diable: La Jouissance Lyrique Sacrée (Paris, 1991).Google Scholar

28 See Zizek, , ‘Why Does the Phallus Appear?’, (see n. 21), 113–46, for an account of versions of the narrative in relation to the quest for the ever lost maternal voice. Wayne Koestenbaum expands on the theme in another sense showing how the prima donna is haunted by her mother, and by voices of other prima donnas.Google ScholarKoestenbaum, Wayne, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire (New York, 1993).Google ScholarFor an interpretation of the psychoanalytic account of the maternal voice as enacted in the voice of opera see Poizat, Michel, The Angel's Cry (see n. 27);Google ScholarTambling, Jeremy, ‘Towards a Psychopathology of Opera’ (see n. 23), 263–80;Google Scholar and Hadlock, Heather, ‘Return of the Repressed: The Prima Donna from Hoffmann's Tales to Offenbach's Contes’, this journal, 6 (1994), 221–44.Google Scholar

29 See Dolar, , ‘The Object Voice’ (see n. 11), 10.Google Scholar

30 Poizat, , The Angel's Cry (see n. 27), 198.Google Scholar

31 The Phantom is the master of trapdoors. He transforms inside into outside, below into above, the sublime into the grotesque.

32 See Clement, Catherine, Opera, or the Undoing of Women (Minneapolis, 1988),Google Scholar and Michal Grover-Friedlander, ‘Voicing Death in Verdi's Operas’, Ph.D.diss., Brandeis University (1997).Google Scholar

33 In the novel, the Phantom is the first ventriloquist ever. This ability is exotically employed for the entertainment of nobility.

34 For a discussion of the genre of Expressionism see, for instance, Robinson, David, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (London, 1997), 35;Google Scholar and Eisner, Lotte, The Haunted Screen (London, 1967).Google Scholar

35 In 1924 there was no tradition of horror films to build on. See MacQueen, Scott, ‘The 1925 Phantom of the Opera’, in American Cinematography (Sept. and Oct. 1989), 34;Google ScholarThe Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (see n. 8), 198–9;Google ScholarBlake, Michael, Lon Chaney: The Man Behind the Thousand Faces (Vestal, NY, 1993).Google Scholar

36 See Žižek, ‘Why does the Phallus Appear?’ (see n. 21), for the threat in the distortion of the amorphic, shapeless flesh hidden by the mask.Google Scholar

37 In the film, the moment of unmasking is related to what I interpret as the Orphic turning around (see below). This moment is crucial for the operatic interpretation of the film. In the masked ball, when everyone puts on a mask, the Phantom changes his to a skull, like a manrisen from the dead. (This is the sole colour sequence in the film.)

38 See Žižek, , ‘Why does the Phallus Appear?’ (see n. 21), 116, for a different context for this idea.Google Scholar

39 On a different sense of the impossibility of reconstructing a representation of the lost voice of the operatic castrato, see Begeron, Katherine, ‘The Castrato as History’, this journal, 8 (1996), 167–84.Google Scholar

40 In the novel, the meaning of the aria texts are embedded within the narrative and explicate the main plot. The libretto reads as follows: ‘Can it be you, Marguerite? / Answer me, answer me quickly! / No, no, it's no longer you! / Its your face no longer! / It's a king's daughter / … Let's complete the transformation! / Now I'm dying to try / the bracelet and the necklace! / Heavens! it's like a hand being laid on my arm!’ In the film, we only see the operatic voice (silenced or heard); we lack the text.

41 For a discussion of the Lacanian mirror stage in film theory see Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror, 7, especially her discussion of Gallop's, Jane ‘Where to Begin?’ from Reading Lacan (Ithaca, 1985), 74–92.Google ScholarSee also Lawrence, Echo and Narcissus (see n. 14).Google Scholar

42 ‘… vampires are invisible in the mirror: because they have read Lacan and, consequently, know how to behave — they materialize objet a which, by definition, ‘cannot be mirrored.’’ Žižek, , Enjoy Your Symptom (see n. 21), 126.Google Scholar

43 See Kopjec, Joan, Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historians (Cambridge, 1994), especially chapter 2, ‘The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan’, 15–38, and chapter 5, ‘Vampires, Breast-Feeding, and Anxiety’, 117–40.Google Scholar

44 For elaboration of these themes see Grover-Friedlander, , ‘Voicing Death in Verdi's Operas’ (see n. 32);Google Scholar and ‘Voicing Death in Opera’, Common Knowledge, 5 (1996), 136–44.Google Scholar

45 In contrast to the pattern of ‘The Beauty and the Beast’ in which the beauty, overcoming what she sees, has the power to affect the visual so that the beast is transformed into a beauty, a perfected partner and duplicate of the original beauty. In Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, the reaction of the prima donna to the revelation of the Phantom's face is kinder. It is this empathy, rather than the horror stressed in the film, that structures the novel and its ending in the prima donna's kiss and the Phantom's remorse.

46 It is interesting that there were several versions of the film's ending with regard to the Phantom's fate. This shows the difficulty of containing the fate of the Phantom even on the level of production and plot. See MacQueen, , ‘The 1925 Phantom ofthe Opera’ (see n. 35).Google Scholar