As a prelude, fifty seconds like something out of a neo-realistic film.
A woman rushes towards a statue of a Madonna and laments to a horrified man: "The truth!
Turiddu stole my happiness and honor, and your wife stole my heart.” It is Santuzza in Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana.
The torments of betrayed love emerge from the sound of her violently vibrating voice.
Cut: "Fine".
With this short scene ended the film "Opera Fanatic", with which the director Jan Schmidt-Garre set out on his search for the "secret of expressive singing" a good two decades ago.
None of the ten singers he called to the witness stand left him with such painful and beautiful memories as Carla Gavazzi.
"I couldn't imagine that a voice could hit me like that again, but then .
.
.”, so the director tells as a first-person narrator at the beginning of his cinematic sequel, “during a car ride I heard the voice of the Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho: “There it was again, the singing that only the soul can hear.” For Schmidt-Garre it was the challenge to explore the deepest secret of vocal expression with three of today's singers - in addition to Ermonela Jaho with the Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian and the Canadian Barbara Hannigan: the "Fuoco Sacro", of which Petrarch once spoke, of a "trembling in the greatest heat and glow under the coldest sky".
What is hidden in the fog of the term "expression"?
Three forms can be distinguished: vocal acting, musical expression and expression of the soul.
The vocal acting - the nuanced pronunciation and the coloring of the tone - and the musical expression - gradations of dynamics, light-dark tones ("chiaroscuro") and rhythmic tension - can be technically defined.
But what is the secret of the "sacred fire", how to explore the expression of soul in song?
Is it, as a skeptic might object, just feelings, often just the dull reaction of the mind?
Paint soul pictures in the sound of the voice
And what makes three singers go to an emotional laboratory in search of an answer: to be observed during rehearsals;
To give answers to questions about their identification with the role and/or about controlling their own feelings;
to talk about moments of fear before the performance and about the relationship to that fickle thousand animal that is called the audience;
finally endure exposing your face to the microscopic view of the camera for minutes?
One of the most amazing moments is a "test" where Salome's final monologue is superimposed on an inner monologue by Asmik Grigorian, who is listening to herself through headphones with her eyes closed.
The ecstasy of the figure can be seen in her face and the physical tension felt as if in a mirror,
when she tells her voice not to "press" when she sings in the tomb of the mystery of love and death.
With Ermonela Jaho you can experience what it means to paint soul pictures in the sound of the voice during the death prayer of Puccini's Suor Angelica or the farewell song of Verdi's Violetta.
Schmidt-Garre composed the film in rhythmically corresponding three-part sequences: short appearances by the singers, then observations of the work during rehearsals and conversation sequences with self-explanations.
"Having a tormented soul," Ermonela Jaho confesses, "helps an artist, because then you're ready to go to extremes."
In Barbara Hannigan we experience the special case of an intellectual singer (and conductor!) who cannot avoid becoming "part of the role", but who, with a hot and cold head, weighs exactly whether she is in a delicate passage with the satisfied with the secure B variant or accepting the risk of the A solution: "The not entirely successful version A is better than the successful B.
' As Rousseau demanded, tears flow from her mind.
The sanguine, impulsive Asmik Grigorian is obviously the “stage animal” burning from within;
it took her years, she admits, to go on stage without a beta-blocker.
How comforting that none of the singers even tried to flatter themselves with the poses of the "umile ancella del genio creator", as a humble servant of art, like Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur".
Never a hint of diva talk;
The pleasurable and agonizing work of singing with all its physical and mental challenges becomes apparent to the senses.
The director knew how to challenge his clever, eloquent protagonists with appropriate, careful and serious questions.
It is to be hoped that the viewers will also be challenged by this clever, sophisticated, but also enigmatic and esoteric film about three charismatic singers, in which there is probably also a tender declaration of love from the director: to Ermolena Jaho, in whose voice that magical fire burns.