Giudeppe Verdi's Music Continues to Inspire Cinema

This year marks the centenary of the death of the great Italian composer, Giuseppe Verdi. The San Francisco Film Society celebrates his life and work by presenting Verdi Goes to the Movies, a two-week series based on his work, or inspired by his music.

The series includes films by such renowned directors as Werner Herzog, Franco Zeffirelli, Bernardo Bertolucci, Nicholas Roeg, Charles Sturridge and Julien Temple, and range from the outrageous Marx Brothers comedy, A Night at the Opera, directed by Sam Wood to Zeffirelli’s La Traviata, starring Teresa Stratas and Plácido Domingo.

When Verdi died in Milan in January 1901, cinema was still in its infancy. The composer who virtually defined the world of Italian opera would never know the impact his work would have on the neophyte art form. Leopoldo Fregoli, the first Italian filmmaker, made the first Verdi film in 1898. Now, over 100 years later, filmmakers are still turning to Verdi’s work for inspiration. Whether it’s an entire opera adapted for the screen or merely a snippet, Verdi’s music resonates on soundtracks with an emotional honesty that is breathtaking.

A highlight of the series will be a screening of Zeffirelli’s La Traviata, considered by many the greatest achievement ever in putting opera on film. Film critic Edward Guthmann called it, “One of the grandest visual experiences ever put onscreen—a sigh and a gasp per minute.” The film had its American premiere at the 26th San Francisco International Film Festival in 1983, where it was shown at the War Memorial Opera House, the first time a film had ever screened in that hallowed temple of lyric art.

The Opening Night premiere was lent even greater importance by the in-person appearance of Zeffirelli and the great Spanish tenor Domingo, as well as producer Tarak Ben Ammar. Zeffirelli, as always, spared no effort to present the grandest vision imaginable of Verdi’s interpretation of the famed novel, The Lady of the Camellias, by Alexandre Dumas fils. The orchestra and choir of the Metropolitan Opera were conducted by James Levine, and the performance of the Bolshoi Ballet’s Vladimir Vassilijev and Ekaterina Maksimova as the Spanish dancers had one critic saying he was “dumbfounded by their brilliance.”

The series celebrates the magnificence of opera in San Francisco’s historic movie palace, the Castro Theatre, May 25–31 and at the Park Theatre in Menlo Park, June 1–7. Verdi Goes to the Movies is scheduled to coincide with the San Francisco Opera’s staging of three of Verdi’s greatest masterworks, La Traviata, Aida and Simon Boccanegra in June.

Special thanks to Anita Monga, Castro Theatre; Anne Goodman, Criterion Pictures; Allie Light, Irving Saraf, Light-Saraf Films; John Kirk, Latanya Taylor, MGM; Ralph McKay; Neil Friedman, Menemsha Entertainment; Mark Rago, Miramax Films; Pacific Film Archive; Rick Norris, Roxie Releasing; Sandra Gisler, T&C Film AG; Edward Zeier, Merrilee Griffin, Universal Studios; Marilee Womack, Warner Bros. Classics; Irma Strehle, Werner Herzog Film GmbH.