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Thief of bagdad4/28/2023 ![]() The project went through so many changes and delays that its young lead actor Sabu had actually grown several inches by the time that the film was nearing completion, and some early scenes had to be shot again. Here we have a film that actually went through six different directors, including Korda himself and his brother, Zoltan. This man is Alexander Korda, and the film that he produced is The Thief of Bagdad. Whatever the truth about movie producers, there is one occasion when we have to pay credit to the vision of one man who played a bigger part than any director or writer in pushing forward a project against all difficulties. An actual producer, David O Selznick, aroused Alfred Hitchcock’s ire so much that Hitchcock cast Raymond Burr as the murderer in Rear Window because of his resemblance to Selznick. Meanwhile the narrator of the film tells a tale of how he wrote a script about Okies living in the Dust Bowl, and this ended up as a movie set on a submarine. In Sunset Boulevard, a producer laments that he turned down the opportunity to make Gone with the Wind, thinking that nobody wished to see another Civil War story This image has been put in our heads to some degree by the directors themselves, and there are plenty of movies that express a cynical opinion about movie producers. Traditionally the movie producer is thought to be the crude and commercial driving force who interferes with the creative talent of the director and writer. A traditional farcical plot then unfolds, with the barber breaking in, Nureddin hiding in a treasure chest and being carried away by servants, and a happy ending when the Caliph arrives and Nureddin is released and betrothed to Margiana.The Thief of Bagdad (the spelling of the movie title is correct) challenges the negative opinion many people have of movie producers. He is proposing to marry her off to a rich friend, but when he leaves, Nureddin enters to woo Margiana. Margiana waits for Nureddin in the women's quarters of her father's house. ![]() (Like Rossini's Figaro, he delivers a virtuoso patter aria, "Bin Akademiker". Abdul Hassan, the barber is summoned, and like his confrère of Seville in Rossini's earlier opera, he adopts the role of co-conspirator in the romance. Bostana, a relative of the Cadi, approving of Nureddin, helps him to woo Margiana by making himself presentable. The hero, Nureddin, is in love with Margiana, daughter of the Cadi. Roles RoleĬhorus: servants of Nureddin, friends of the Cadi, people of Baghdad, mourning women, followers of the Caliph. It has a minor niche in the operatic repertoire. In the 20th century, the opera was performed infrequently abroad but held its own in German opera companies using the original text, rather than Mottl's or Levi's revisions. Finally, in June 1904, the original version as composed by Cornelius was again staged in the Weimar Hoftheater, this time to popular approval and critical acclaim. In New York City the work was first played in 1890 by the Metropolitan Opera House Company and in London in 1891. In the late 19th century two versions were made, by the noted Wagnerian conductors Felix Mottl and Hermann Levi. ![]() The opera closed after only one performance, and Liszt resigned his post. However, political actions by the director of the theater resulted in demonstrations against Liszt and the so-called neo-German school of composition. The composer's mentor and friend Franz Liszt conducted the premiere. Īt its first performance the opera was a failure, and it was not played again in the composer's lifetime. Cornelius offered the inventive and complex opera as an alternative to the contemporary German opera composers such as Richard Wagner, whose ideological fervor he found overwhelming. Unlike most German comic operas of the period, which have spoken dialogue, Der Barbier von Bagdad is through composed. Franz Liszt later arranged the second overture for orchestra (S.352). Performance history Ĭornelius planned the work as a one-act comedy, but on the advice of Franz Liszt expanded it to two. The first of three operas by Cornelius, the piece was first performed at the Hoftheater in Weimar on 15 December 1858. Der Barbier von Bagdad ( The Barber of Baghdad) is a comic opera in two acts by Peter Cornelius to a German libretto by the composer, based on The Tale of the Tailor and The Barber’s Stories of his Six Brothers in One Thousand and One Nights.
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