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1 Joachim Herz on the Cinematic Composition of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman • The Flying Dutchman • A DVD Release by the DEFA Film Library Joachim Herz on the Cinematic Composition of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman y It will be impossible to appreciate Wagner’s piece as freestanding music while watching the film. If that’s r a r b i

what people are looking for, they should listen to a record. At the moment, it’s not possible to evaluate to L

m l what extent we may create too much image for the music; we’ll see when we are done. In any case, our i F

A goal is to produce a “real film.” It is not yet clear whether we will be successful in creating—or at least F E D

helping to create—an aesthetic artistic genre, or whether the project will solely serve to get people who e h t

y

don’t like opera interested in the art form. Even the latter would be a very important contribution. […] b

e s a e l e

The musical form is not a constraint, but rather the foundation upon which you can build in finding scenic R

D solutions. In film, this implies basing the editing on the music. […] We will probably base our editing on the V D

A orchestra score. My original idea was to only use cuts, which horrified my film colleagues. I just watched •

n

Room at the Top [UK, 1959, dir. Jack Clayton] with great pleasure and noticed that they did not use many a m h

hard editing cuts, but rather dissolves as the characteristic transition. We need a characteristic transition c t u D for the imaginary scenes; but if we use dissolves too much, it might limit understanding. […] g n i y l F

Aside from the two layers of the story, there are also other imaginary overlays. I’m thinking of the very real e h T setting of the Senta ballad, in which we see things that do not take place in the spinning room. You can’t just • n a illustrate this, of course; on the other hand, we also couldn’t just present the ballad as a simple vocal perfor - m h c t mance. The same applies to Erik’s curious dream vision, which Senta dreams along with him; we absolutely u D

g could not represent this simply as a vocal performance. Her fantasy rushes ahead of his telling, she dreams n i y l F faster because she wishes for exactly what he dreads. For this scene, we will use simultaneous imaginary e h T overlays and, for the first time, the relief effect technique—in which the positive and negative image are s ’ r e

duplicated, one over the other, and slightly misaligned. This required extensive experimentation. I would like n g to mention here that these experiments and discoveries must primarily be credited to Erich Gusko, our a W

d r

director of cinematography, who also proved to be a colleague who was very open to the music. For him, a h c i

musicality had to impregnate the very camera movements and dolly shots. Even the person who pushes the R

f o

dolly has to push based on the music. In short, we created a series of professions that don’t usually exist. n o i t i

Basically everybody here has to be a music film expert. […] s o p m o C

We recorded the whole opera synchronously: that is, we recorded the chorus and each voice separately. It c i t was a herculean task for the conductor, music director Rolf Reuter. He had to conduct the singers in time to a m e n the orchestra, to which they were all listening through headphones. This is terrible, because you have to i C

e h match every take to the slight variations you made while conducting the orchestra the first time. In one part, t

n o for example, we recorded the orchestra on three channels, the Ghostly Chorus on one channel, the Sailors’ z r e H

and Spinners’ Choruses on two sides of the street with three tracks each and, to top it all off, three solo m i voices—all synchronized on individual tapes. First, this allows the orchestra to be handled during mixing in h c a o

the same way the conductor would during recording, as it is possible to bring out or soften certain groups of J instruments. Second, I can give each solo voice the resonance it needs. And third, it is possible to adjust single voices so that when a character moves from right to left—or wherever the case may be—the voice also moves. Orchestra and chorus were recorded in so-called real stereophonic sound, and the solo voices in pseudo-stereophonic sound—that is, localized on one line, as is commonly done because this is all that’s possible with today’s technology.

The special effects channel will play an important role in our film, and we will send a circular to all movie theaters ahead of time asking them to “clean the channel,” because it isn’t usually used. We will use this channel antiphonically. The ghostly parts will mainly come from behind the viewers. For example, there is the wonderful scene in which the Sailors’ Chorus is singing at the pub for the second time, and something

2 Joachim Herz on the Cinematic Composition of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman y ghostly is developing outside. In a regular screening you’d only notice that they repeat the song they sang r a r b i

before; it’s something I already tried to counteract in my staging of the opera as well. In our film, in contrast, L

m l it works as follows: On channel 1 and 3, on the screen, you hear the sailors backed by woodwinds and i F

A horns, not loud, more in the background. Accordingly, it is also in the background in the film: we are outside F E D

the pub; all you see are shadows at the windows. Then, in the foreground, dry leaves start to dance, then a e h t ghostly fog rolls in. This is the string counterpoint, the tremolos; they begin quite strongly on channel 2—that y b

e s

is, in the middle—while behind us come the horns, trombones and kettledrums that introduce the a e l Dutchman’s leitmotif, just as the Dutchman’s crew approaches from the harbor. Back in the pub, when the e R

D hellish noise and witches’ Sabbath begin, the piccolos, tomtoms and ghostly voices of the chorus are behind V D

A

the viewer, while the voices of the anxious Norwegian sailors come from the front on three-channels. •

n a m

It was extremely hard to find the right cast. First of all, many actors who wanted the parts—both well-known h c t u D

and aspiring actors—ran away when they heard they were to perform an opera. We received all kinds of g n i

rebuffs, you name it. […] We spent a full 33 days on screen tests. We contacted over 50 Sentas and 28 y l F

Dalands. The production manager went to Prague and Budapest, and I went twice to Warsaw and Łód ź. We e h T invited 16 Sentas to shoot test takes, three of whom were in Warsaw. We finally chose Anna Prucnal, a • n a

Polish music student from Warsaw who had just graduated with her diploma in singing. She has already m h c t filmed in Bulgaria and played in a comedy in Poland, but is still primarily a full-time music student, which is u D

g

very good for her. She has a very unusual, fascinating face and incredibly strong emotional expressiveness. n i y l F

e h T

It was especially hard to cast the chorus. Mostly it is the Leipzig Opera Choir that sings and acts. But because s ’ r e

of issues of availability and photogenic traits, we had to create a second chorus. We spent long, demanding n g hours shooting test takes with actors in the supporting cast and finally found five (of thirty) to supplement a W

d r

our main chorus; these then had to learn the complete vocal score. Some colleagues from the theater in a h c Potsdam helped out as well. i R

f o

n o i t To sum up, of course we hope that our film will take us a step forward in solving the problematic definition of i s o opera film or film opera. I could very well imagine some other operas as films. With The Flying Dutchman , it p m o C would have been an outright shame not to make it into a film, because the intertwining of fantasy and reality c i t is perfect for cinema. The music, with its strong quotient of ocean and nature, with its deft communication of a m e n folk heartiness and tender lyrics, both always linked to the situation, is absolutely made for a film adaptation. i C

e h

And every time I listen to the music alone, I have to say that it was really composed for this film. t

n o

z r e H

m i h c a o J

3