'Fantasia' Around The World

GIUSEPPE PENNISI visits the big screen in Rome

Do you remember Walt Disney's Fantasia? A 'concert movie', then a new concept, premiered on 13 November 1940, in only thirteen cinemas especially equipped with Fantasound — special machinery to give the audience the illusion that the music was not recorded but live as in a concert hall. Leopold Stokowski conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra to accompany ten animated episodes with well-known pieces of classical concert music. Making Fantasia cost the Disney factory three years of hard labor by some three thousands designers, animators, technicians and no less than ten movie directors. The success was such that in 1999, Roy Disney, Walt's grand-son, produced Fantasia 2000 with different musical pieces and episodes. Of course, computers were enlisted to replace the earlier handmade pictures and animation; the recorded music was directed by James Levine and played by the Chicago Symphony.

Poster for 'Fantasia 2000'. © Walt Disney Pictures

Now, to celebrate the seventy fifth anniversary of the original Fantasia, the two movies have been merged to make one 90 minute film — an excellent way to compare the hand-made 1940 animation with the 1999 computerized images. The basic Walt Disney 'concert movie' has eventually been implemented: Disney Fantasia — the title of the new show with music and visuals — is making a worldwide tour, which started in Boston, with live music. In the pit is Keith Lockhart (principal conductor of the London-based BBC Concert Orchestra as well as of the Boston Pops). Generally, the Boston Pops Orchestra too is in the pit, but in certain locations, local orchestras play under Lockhart's baton. In Rome this 'concert movie' had the benefit of being played by the symphony orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, a much stronger complex than the Boston Pops in a nearly Mahlerian formation, with over one hundred and twenty players.

'Disney Fantasia' in Rome, with Keith Lockhart and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Photo © 2016 Riccardo Musacchio and Flavio Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution

The success in Italy has been tremendous. Initially, three concerts were planned (within Santa Cecilia's normal symphonic season), but the box office demand was such that five 'movie concerts' were held between 5 and 8 January. I attended the 6 January 2016 afternoon concert. At the request for an encore, Lockhart and the orchestra added the finale of Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals to the other pieces by Beethoven, Stravinsky, Ponchielli, Saint-Saëns, Dukas and Tchaikovsky, to quote the best known.

'Disney Fantasia' in Rome, with members of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in silhouette. Photo © 2016 Riccardo Musacchio and Flavio Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution

The five concerts were sold out, which means a paying audience of 12,500 in only four days. 'With such an audience', said the Santa Cecilia Academy's President, Michele Dall'Ongaro, 'the Academy is confirmed to be, with its four orchestras and twelve choruses, the national leader in bringing the new generation to symphonic music'.

In short, the first Fantasia does not show its seventy-five year age. In several aspects, in my view, the artisan-created animated drawings, well-synchronised with the scores, are more enthralling than the more recent computerized work.

All ten pieces (plus the encore) are repertory of the Academy of Santa Cecilia Symphony Orchestra. They played very well, with their eyes occasionally peeking at the huge screen over and behind them, to enjoy the marvels of the images.

Nessun commento:

Posta un commento

patrikpen

giovedì 12 maggio 2016