Concert by the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra
This year the whole world remembers Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) on his 125th birthday. To some he was a small, funny man with a characteristic moustache. Others see him as the brilliant master of the art of tragicomedy and then there are some who regard him as a clown whose achievements are not worth wasting time on. Yes, a clown but an outstanding one, the like of which has not been seen since. We can believe Chaplin’s often quoted line: “I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.” A court without its jester is destined for a self-satisfied and inevitable demise.
The Latvian National Symphony Orchestra offers the chance to start off the year of Chaplin’s anniversary with the master’s burlesque on the theme of Carmen. On 10 February the Latvian National Opera will be transformed for one evening into a magnificent cinema. The screen will flicker with the comic antics in Chaplin’s Carmen film. In front of the LNSO will be the American composer and conductor Timothy Brock who specializes in silent film and who has written several scores for films made before the arrival of sound. In recent years Brock has been particularly interested in the films of Charlie Chaplin and so his visit to Riga at the beginning of Chaplin’s year is very timely.
In the first part of the LNSO cinema concert, the orchestra under Timothy Brock will play the accompaniment to the Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959) film Carmen (1915). There will be no joking around here as the drama is played out with all the passion and blood envisaged by Georges Bizet. The film is based on the opera, not the novel by Prosper Mérimée and perhaps that is why the opera diva Geraldine Farrar (1882–1967) was chosen for the title role, the ideal of beauty of the silent screen. Those interested can go to youtube.com and hear her recordings made around the same time as the film Carmen. Of course they have been touched by time but her still enchanting voice will make you want to listen again and again. Don Jose was played by Wallace Reid (1891–1923) who was known as the most perfect screen lover. This was the film debut of the later highly popular screen actor Pedro de Cordoba (1881–1950) who played Escamillo. The orchestra score is by Hugo Riesenfeld (1879–1939) who was a well known composer for the cinema. Timothy Brock restored his score in 1995.
Charlie Chaplin’s Burlesque on Carmen was released that same year in 1915 but any similarity to DeMille’s film ends there. One can recognise the storyline but the misunderstandings and comic peripetia inevitably lead to diversions from the familiar. At the beginning of the film we learn that the innkeeper and smuggler Lillas Pastia has spent 50 years learning how to steal and now hopes his skills will earn him a career in politics. The curtain opens with the arrival of the smugglers and after that just try keeping up with the twists and turns in the action. This is all embellished by an attractive long-eared mule, the small and loveable Frasquita who is the size of a wardrobe, short daggers in long scabbards and other comical details and images. Carmen is played by Edna Purviance (1895–1958) who features in many of Chaplin’s films. The reels are full of jokes that in today’s context will perhaps have been seen many times and seem naïve but we should remember that we are watching a work from the dawn of cinema in which, incidentally, Chaplin was only 26 when he played Don Jose.
Tickets available at: www.bilesuparadize.lv
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