When you think of “Frankenstein,” does opera come to mind? Mary Shelley’s classic novel about a scientist who tries to create life by unnatural means, but ends up creating a monster, is hardly the most musical horror story. However, Los Angeles Opera chose it as the basis of its Off Grand Halloween performance this year. The premiere, which was performed on Oct. 28 and 29, was not an original opera based on the story of Frankenstein’s monster. Instead, it was a live operatic accompaniment to the 1931 Universal film starring Boris Karloff.
This year, the tradition continued with the screening of another Universal horror film, “Frankenstein.” I’ve wanted to attend one of these events for years because of my dual interests in opera and classic film. When I heard about this year’s event, I was curious to see how a talkie would work with live operatic accompaniment, since it has an existing soundtrack of dialogue, sound effects, and some music.
The score was composed and conducted by Michael Shapiro, who opened the program with a short talk about his ideas for the score. He explained that the original film had no score, which was often the case with early talkies, so his composition serves to accompany the beloved classic. The music was brought to life by a small group of LA Orchestra musicians and six LA Opera soloists, five of whom are part of the company’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program.
As the lights dimmed in the packed theater, a percussive attack on drum and piano began the overture.
A Dramatic Experience
Golden Era composers like Max Steiner and Bernard Hermann honed film scoring to an art. Horror films’ most chilling moments are far more effective with strings, timpani, and woodwinds to build tension, punctuate the action, or make an otherwise innocent scene sinister. In the early days of sound films, Hollywood was still perfecting the technology of synchronizing dialogue with movement, so many movies didn’t have background scores. To fill that void in this film, composer Michael Shapiro wrote a score to accompany “Frankenstein” in 2001, having been commissioned by The Chappaqua Orchestra’s Boris Koutzen Memorial Fund. It was first performed twenty years ago at the Jacob Burns Film Center in New York. Since then, it’s been performed over forty times. Adding vocal lines with Requiem-inspired Latin words was one of the changes Michael Shapiro made to his original score for this performance.It was truly a dramatic experience. The instrumentalists were amazing, as I expected from the LA Opera Orchestra. It’s a tribute to their musicianship how seamlessly they blended to create a unified sound which complemented the action on the screen. Unlike some past performances of this kind, the singers weren’t featured as distinct characters or individual voices. Instead, they created an ambient sound of indistinct voices, sometimes ethereal and sometimes menacing. At times, it was very difficult to hear the unamplified singers seated behind the orchestra, but I believe this was the effect Shapiro wanted.
The music usually remained subdued during the dialogue, but there were intense scenes where the instruments drowned out the actors’ words onscreen. Anticipating this, they screened the film with subtitles, a choice which I questioned at first but appreciated the few times the orchestra swelled to higher decibels than the recorded dialogue. In addition to providing mood music, the score accented onscreen actions, like dirt falling on a coffin or lightening striking. In addition to background music during the film’s normal runtime, the score included an overture and a dirge-like finale which played as the final seconds of the film’s climax played on repeat. Although the burning windmill at the end of the film was a dramatic image, I think it would have been better to just freeze the picture during the extended music instead of replaying the few seconds of footage dozens of times.
Playing God
“Frankenstein” was made during the Pre-Code Era of Hollywood, when the Motion Picture Production Code, commonly called the Hays Code, had technically been adopted by the film industry but was completely ignored by the studios. The Studio Relations Committee, the board which unsuccessfully tried to enforce the Code between 1930 and July of 1934, had no power to demand changes be made to films. The only things which put a check on movie content was censor boards, which had varying levels of power and very different standards throughout the country and world. One of the most common problems censors had with this film was Dr. Frankenstein’s exultant line upon animating the monster, “Now I know what it’s like to be God!” This utterance was considered extremely blasphemous, and it was deleted when the film was re-released later in the 1930s.“Frankenstein” is a frighteningly believable scenario in the 21st century. Dr. Henry Frankenstein is a scientist who becomes intoxicated with ideas of his own brilliance. He abandons good sense, scientific standards, and even laws of common decency in his pursuit of controlling nature. Instead of using his skills to ease the suffering of mankind and perhaps do some good for the human race, he tries to play God. Such endeavors can never be anything but disastrous, so his experiment takes a ghastly turn when the creature he brought to life proves violent and aggressive. The problem is not the criminal brain his assistant mistakenly stole for the monster but the scientific brain which knows no law but its own will.
Dr. Frankenstein neither has regard for existing human life nor the artificially created life of his monster. He robs graves to compile the body of creation, who he boasts is human but frequently calls “it” and denies all basic rights. The creature is treated like a savage animal, and he quickly learns to behave like a wild beast. Like an animal, the monster is kind and gentle until he is frightened and harassed. It’s only after he’s been taunted and hurt that he turns dangerous, since he views people as a threat. It really is a moral tale which raises questions about human rights and what constitutes a human life. In a world increasingly dominated by test tube babies, artificial intelligence, and the laboratory manufacturing of living organism, where life is a commodity to be manufactured and destroyed, this is a very relevant topic.
History, Horror, and High Notes
Downtown Los Angeles is home to dozens of historic movie theaters. Although many of them are still standing and in decent repair, a significant amount are boarded up or being used as retail spaces. I’m always delighted to see historic theaters playing old movies, as they were intended to do. The Theatre at Ace Hotel is a magnificent movie palace beneath the hotel, so it’s the perfect choice for LA Opera’s yearly screenings. I love that LA Opera is exploring inventive ways to combine classical singing with other genres of entertainment without distorting the classic works.I look forward to finding out what film will be the basis of the next operatic Halloween presentation at the Ace Theatre. If you’re interested in attending one of the screenings next year, don’t wait until the last minute to buy your tickets, since these events are very popular. In the meantime, keep a lookout for future Off Grand performances from LA Opera this season.
