Margaret and the Barcarolle

Last week I praised a film called Margaret by the American playwright and film director, Kenneth Lonergan.

The film makes splendid use of a couple of famous operatic arias. I went so far as to say that Mr. Lonergan’s use of the “Barcarolle” from Les contes d’Hoffmann at the end of his film was “sublime.”

Of course, it was the music of Jacques Offenbach (top) that was truly sublime. Nevertheless, with time to think things over, I still believe Lonergan’s use of the aria was brilliant, beautifully expressive of the point he was trying to make, and something close to a coup de cinéma.

So, “sublime” applies pretty well to the moment in the film, as well.

Why do I bring all this up again? Because in today’s New York Times, the freelance music critic Zachary Woolfe picks out the same moment in the same film as an example of what is supposedly wrong with the way opera is depicted in the movies.

In a nutshell, Mr. Woolfe (right) argues that opera performance today is boring, stodgy, and focused on a handful of warhorses that appeal primarily to a status-conscious, one-percent crowd.

He claims that opera-going has been reduced to a “date night” with fancy gowns, and is “less a living encounter than a trip to Madame Tussaud’s.” And he blames all this on the use of arias in films such as Margaret—for giving the masses the wrong idea about opera!

Woolfe’s article is fairly incoherent, and I won’t attempt to refute it point by point. Suffice it to say that implicit in his argument (such as it is) is the notion that “vitality” in art is equivalent to “relevance” and “innovation”—that the demotic and the new are the chief virtues of any art form today, and are to be sought for their own sakes.

Nowhere does he ask himself why it is that contemporary music—which has abandoned the ideal of beauty in favor of postmodern “edginess” and “transgression”—has so little attraction for ordinary people. Surely, the movies are not to blame for the failure of the music of Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others to catch on with the masses!

Might it not be, rather, because aesthetic appeal has something to do with the spiritual side of man—something that many postmodernists would deny exists? Could that be why classical music is able to move us in a way that atonal and “experimental” music can’t?

But the wrong turn that classical music took in the twentieth century—not alone among the arts, admittedly—is a huge topic. All I want to say here is that, as a piece of film criticism, Woolfe’s article is extraordinarily obtuse. He never even asks himself what the dramatic and the aesthetic purposes of the “Barcarolle” are in the scene he is taking to task.

It’s as though he feels free to assume that politics is the only relevant critical category nowadays, and aesthetics is just some antiquated rhetorical flourish—perhaps a hegemonic discourse of the remnant ruling class, destined to go the way of all other old rubbish, such as the family, religion, and the soul of man.

What is the point of that closing scene in Margaret, by the way?

More or less, that the teenage girl, Lisa, who is the heroine of the film and who is locked painfully inside her own suffering, is enabled by learning to experience the beauty in art to break out of her adolescent self-absorption, and begin to grow up emotionally.

I think Mr. Lonergan (left) is clearly saying that much. But I would go still farther, and say that Lisa’s experience allows her to attain to a higher viewpoint, one from which she can see that there is something in her, as in all human beings, that is incorruptible and eternal—that can transcend suffering and, in some measure, redeem it.

What evidence do I have?

Just the imperishable beauty of the “Barcarolle” itself, which—though it celebrates sexual ecstasy—by its exquisite musical form enables the enraptured listener for a time to transcend the physical plane of his existence altogether.

* * *

* * *

Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour,
Souris à nos ivresses!
Nuit plus douce que le jour,
Ô belle nuit d’amour!

Le temps fuit et sans retour
Emporte nos tendresses;
Loin de cet heureux séjour
Le temps fuit sans retour.
Zéphyrs embrasés,
Bercez-nous de vos caresses!
Zéphyrs embrasés,
Donnez-nous vos baisers!
Bercez-nous de vos baisers!

Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour,
Souris à nos ivresses!
Nuit plus douce que le jour,
Ô belle nuit d’amour!

—libretto by Jules Barbier & Michel Carré

* * *

[Beautiful night, O night of love,
smile on our excesses!
Night more beautiful than day,
O beautiful night of love!

[Time departs and won't return this way,
Robbing us of our tenderness;
Far from this fortunate day,
Time won't return this way.
Burning breezes,
Rock us with your caresses!
Burning breezes,
Endow us with your kisses!
Rock us with your kisses!

[Beautiful night, O night of love,
smile on our excesses!
Night more beautiful than day,
O beautiful night of love!]

[my translation]