“Through-Sung”?
No one seems to be stating plainly that Tom Hooper‘s Les Miserables is not a musical — it’s an opera. And yet Hooper is steering clear of the term — too high falutin’ sounding, I suppose — and instead calling it a “through-sung musical.”
Maybe it’s me or maybe I’m a little fucked up or something (as Joe Pesci‘s Tommy said during that famous Bamboo Lounge scene in Goodfellas), but a musical narrative piece that is entirely sung without any dialogue to speak of is an opera, right? It doesn’t have to be La Boheme or Aida — you just have to sing it all the way through. Like Alan Parker‘s Evita. Yes, Parker’s film had five or six lines so that technically made it an operetta. But Hooper is saying Les Miz is “all song.”
Hooper explained his view in arecent chat with TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, to wit:
“Hugh Jackman said the other day that he thinks the movie musical is the Mount Everest of filmmaking,” Hooper said, “and I became intrigued about whether that combination of singing and music and storytelling could create an alternate reality in which emotion could be even more heightened.”
“While many of the most successful movie musicals of last 20 years have used various stratagems to deal with the musical problem — How do you get a modern audience to buy into people suddenly breaking into song? — Hooper went with a little-used solution: He created a “through-sung” musical in which the entire film is sung. There aren’t any jarring moments in which characters shift from dialogue to song because it’s all song.”
In other words, as Pesci would say, it’s a fucking opera.
“I really went back to school and studied all the great musicals,” Hooper said. “And I was struck by the difficulty of the gear change. I remember in ‘The Sound of Music,’ there’s a 28-minute stretch without a song, and then there’s a romantic song.
“And you kind of go, ‘Oh, we’re back in a song,’
“The original draft of the screenplay was 50 percent dialogue and 50 percent music, and I worried that there wasn’t a clear rationale about why you were singing at one point and speaking at another. And the more I looked over it, the more I thought, there’s not an obvious justification to be in one mode or the other mode. And then I thought, maybe the way to avoid those difficult gear changes is just to commit to singing.”
“The result, he said, is the creation of an alternative world. ‘We’re just saying, ‘This is a world like ours, but just as we generate grammatical and sentence construction, these people generate melody and rhyme construction. Other than that, it’s exactly the same.’”
I have to say that I love what Hooper said during a post-screening q & a about the benefit of having won a Best Picture Oscar: “I had a feeling after The King’s Speech that when the industry gives you that kind of acknowledgement, you should use it to take a risk or to stretch yourself. I didn’t want to be conservative and do another film like that.”
I think they’re steering clear of the term “opera” because people will associate that with 1) a smaller-scale stage performance, and 2) something their parents would like but they should stay away from. Better to bill it as an epic film spectacle that happens to have some singing, whether or not that’s the case.
Kind of surprised that they considered a 50/50 dialogue/music version. The broadway version has just a handful of spoken exclamations.
That said I’ve always felt the lyrics do a great job of selling the character’s emotions and personal stories, but kind of skimp on the history and expect the audience to know all the ins and outs of the French revolution.
You would call Umbrellas of Cherbourg an opera?
Thought NYT article Opera? Musical? Please Respect the Difference agrees with you: Here is the difference: Both genres seek to combine words and music in dynamic, felicitous and, to invoke that all-purpose term, artistic ways. But in opera, music is the driving force; in musical theater, words come first.”
Also it rejects the idea that Opera means better quality: To begin with, in no way do I see the matter as a lowbrow-highbrow debate. Opera is not by definition the more elevated form. Few operas are as overwrought as Andrew Lloyd Webbers Sunset Boulevard. And there is no bigger crowd pleaser than Leoncavallos impassioned Pagliacci.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/theater/musical-or-opera-the-fine-line-that-divides-them.html?pagewanted=all
as i posted yesterday:
comment #17
scooterzz says …
like the stage version, the film is a sung-through musical..if there are fifty words of dialog, i’d be surprised…now we can rehash the argument about the difference between an ‘opera’ and a ‘musical’ (as happened when ‘sweeney todd’ was released)….
Posted by scooterzz at November 24, 2012 6:15 PM
CanCan beat me to the punch — I was about to post a link to the same article.
Key phrase: “In opera, music is the driving force; in musical theater, words come first.”
Les Miz has long dwelled in its own realm regarding this question. The relative lack of dialogue (to other musicals) and the relative difficulty of the material put it in its own class.
But then again, even opera has “spoken” dialogue in the form of recitative, which, while sung, is usually (particularly in Italian opera) built and conceived as expository material. Musically, its job is more to advance the story and act as a bridge to the next aria.
Sung-through musicals are hardly a new thing, Wells. Hooper didn’t invent the term or the concept. A bunch of Andrew Lloyd Webber trash falls into that category.
Les Mis has been a sung-through musical (not an opera) for 30 years. If this film is going to be your next take-down mission (smart move giving up on Lincoln), you’re going to have to find a different angle.
Why is the opera/not an opera thing even an issue at this point? Les Miz has been around since the mid 80s and it’s been seen by more people world-wide than any other stage musical in history. It’s always been sung-through and the tens of millions of people who’ve seen it onstage never had a problem with it having minimal spoken dialogue.
Saw the trailer in front of LINCOLN. Hooper needs a gutsy cinematographer to tell him what lenses look right and which ones don’t…
I’d like to know how Hooper rationalizes his shot choices. They really are off-putting.
I am really at a loss with this one. At the theater where I work it seems everyone….employees, everyone who buys a tix and sees the poster….old…young…everyone really…cannot wait to see this film. I’m talking young urban kids, parents, older guys and woman and everyone in between. I one the other hand, could not give less of a shit about this film.
JBM wrote: “I’d like to know how Hooper rationalizes his shot choices. They really are off-putting.”
While I agree with you, I’m guessing like this: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
What did his bad lens choices in King’s Speech get him? Oh… just Academy Awards for Best Director and Picture. So obviously, we are in the minority.
Not all operas are sung all the way through. You have the quasi-singing grey area of the recitatives, and then in cases like ‘The Magic Flute’ many scenes are spoken just as in a modern musical. I actually see no difference between The Magic Flute and many a Broadway musical except a) it’s in German, and b) the music is better.
@Mr.F.: Thinking about it, it’s more the frequency than the choices themselves. Moderation is the key. I mean, an entire movie shot like this, to me, is just…
The composers of Les Mis actually used direct quotes or variations direct from the novel as the basis of the songs and the lyrics do advance the story. People who know the source were literally able to find the passage for the new song “Suddenly”. Since it is sung through people not familiar with the novel or show … go and just let the lyrics and images carry them away, or read a synopsis of the story to have an anchor for the music. Spoilers but there is a synopsis on my website.