Knowing The Score: Filmmakers Giving New Life To Opera Music

DALLAS - Sometimes, good things happen to bad operas.

Consider "La Wally." Although Arturo Toscanini championed it a century ago - he even named his daughter Wally - the absurd tale of vengeance, narrow escape and sulking on Tyrolean mountaintops hasn't gone much of anywhere since.

That is, except in the movies, which discovered it, or rather its single standout aria, with a vengeance in the last two decades. "Diva," a French comedy-thriller, piped up first in 1982. The title character, played by Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, sings "Ebben? Ne andro lontana" as the film's big number.

Then came "Someone to Watch Over Me" in 1987. Tough cop Tom Berenger guards rich socialite Mimi Rogers as "Ebben? Ne andro lontana" is heard on the soundtrack. "Philadelphia" followed in 1993. Tom Hanks wastes away with AIDS as the aria spools out discreetly in the background.

"Ebben?" is full of longing and sadness, almost tailor-made for the roles it has played. The movie house, not the opera house, has exposed Catalani's music to millions, numbers he never would have approached in his short lifetime (he died in 1893 at age 39).

"La Wally" isn't the only obscure opera to be championed by the movies. In the 1980s, there was a mini-boom for "Lakm" - a prettily tragic tale of love in colonial India. Although Delibes' work is occasionally produced, it is unremarkable except for two numbers: "Ou va la jeune Indoue," often called "The Bell Song," and "Dome

epais," otherwise known as "The Flower Duet."

The haunting melody of "The Flower Duet" blossoms with dreamy languor. That was enough for the makers of "The Hunger" in 1983, "Five Corners" in 1988 and "Someone to Watch Over Me" (again). The three films demonstrate two things: the different ways one piece of music can be used and the fact that filmmakers borrow from one another shamelessly.

In "The Hunger," "The Flower Duet" accompanies a lesbian encounter between vampire Catherine Deneuve and her new acolyte, Susan Sarandon. In "Someone," it plays as Berenger and Rogers have sex. "Five Corners" is another matter. Elizabeth Berridge, Cathryn De Prume, Rodney Harvey and Daniel Jenkins "elevator-surf" to it, joy-riding up and down a shaft on top of two elevators. (Berridge appeared in a more musical film as Mozart's wife, Constanze, in "Amadeus".)

Filmmakers have found many uses for opera - and fortunately, not only mediocre opera. Opera serves as a shorthand signifier, a way to quickly delineate personalities and situations. It's been noted before that placing somebody in an opera box clues the audience in that the character is either wealthy, gay or villainous.

In Woody Allen's "Hannah & Her Sisters," a self-involved architect played by Sam Waterston watches Manon Lescaut. In "Pretty Woman," super-rich Richard Gere and Julia Roberts bond at "La Traviata." The obvious connection is that both Roberts in the box and Violetta onstage are kept women with good hearts.

Depending on such signifiers is risky. "Philadelphia" director Jonathan Demme was accused of playing to stereotypes with the gay protagonist's love of opera. But it can just as well be argued that the climactic scene involving opera has a profound dramatic effect. Hanks and Denzel Washington listen to a recording of Maria Callas singing "La momma morta" from Giordano's "Andrea Chenier." It's an aria about death, and Hanks anguishes about his own approaching demise as a touched Washington looks on.

Gangsters sometimes do their evil deeds to opera - it's an effective contrast between the civility represented by art and the barbarity of the criminal act. There is some historical justification here as well. Both opera and the Mafia have their origins in Italy. An opera-loving mafioso is not an absurdity.

Brian DePalma used opera to create a deft bit of wicked comedy in "The Untouchables." Robert De Niro as Al Capone sits enthroned in a box as a tenor sings the most famous of all arias, "Vesti la giubba" from "Pagliacci." In the aria, a grieving clown bemoans having to pretend to be cheerful. As a sympathetic tear courses down De Niro's cheek, an underling whispers to him that a mob hit has succeeded. De Niro smiles through his tears, but his emotions are, of course, the opposite of the clown's.

Pagliacci's operatic twin, "Cavalleria Rusticana," hasn't been ignored, either. In Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather, Part III," Mascagni's rustic tragedy plays as the climactic shootout occurs in and around a Sicilian opera house. Again, the contrast is between civility and barbarity.

One of the most admired of all films, Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," uses opera as a clever, if minor, plot device.

A brief operatic scene, in which the publishing mogul's young wife flops as a diva, appears twice. Many opera-lovers have sat puzzled, thinking, "I can't quite place that one." There's a good reason: It's not from a real opera; it was composed especially for the film by Bernard Herrmann.