Czech director Petr Weigl has made some excellent operatic films. Michael Oliver, in The Classical Video Guide, called A Village Romeo and Juliet ‘one of the few ... of which the description “perfect” is no exaggeration’. What can one say about this film?
As usual, Weigl uses actors miming to a pre-recorded soundtrack, a technique he employs better than most. Here, however, he seems to have decided that Donizetti’s handling of Schiller’s Maria Stuart is insufficiently dramatic, and that dubbing will let him ginger it up.
So the actors mouth stretches of Schiller’s verse – in German – and suddenly burst into the familiar voices of Sutherland, Pavarotti, Tourangeau et al, from Decca’s Bonynge recording ... in Italian. Even those with something of both languages can hardly slip between them without tripping over the mental doorstep. The whole acting style and pace have to change (especially for the outsize Decca performances!) and the evident fact that neither set of voices belong to the Czech actors themselves adds another layer of disorientation. If this were only the recitative, it would be daft enough; but whole chunks of the score are discarded, so much that this shouldn’t really be sold as the complete opera. The crucial (and apocryphal) encounter between the two Queens is played out in speech – until the scorned Mary suddenly stiffens operatically and launches into song for her protest and fatal denunciation. The effect is remarkable, but not, alas, in the way the director surely intended.
These criticisms apart, the film is not uneffective – but otherwise, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?'