Throughout the Opera Meets Film series, we’ve explored a great deal of opera/film relationships. From stage adaptations of films, experimental works, documentaries, controversial stories and plots, and even dialogues on academic research, the opera-film relationship is complex. The very term, opera, can mean many things, from a metaphor to a psychology of struggle. But practically, when opera is used in film, its meaning and story may or may not change depending on the whims of the project leader at hand. For some, the plot is taken as the narrative base, but creatively manipulated in various manners. For others, the operatic material is the base for an entirely new way of depicting the operatic story. In recent works, the line between cinema and opera become fused, with the operatic singer donning the role of actor far more than ever before, and with cinematic tools, a new type of intimacy is born between music, dramaturgy, and narrative. While we’ve explored Maria Callas’ film legacy, and the ways Wagner’s music is used, I want to explore how film adaptations compare with each other as adaptations of opera.

In this four-part series, we’ll explore four operas and their various film adaptations, taking into account how they relate and differ from each other. The relationship between mediums when it comes to opera and film have truly historic roots dating all the way back to the first sound-film recordings, and this was a global phenomenon. But following the introduction of opera into film, like so with Wagner’s music around the mid 1910s via ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ the opera-film relationship only developed, and rapidly as by the 1920s, an entire dynamic had grown despite being silent at first via films like, ‘Les cloches de Corneville‘ (1917) and ‘Tiefland‘ (1922). In part one, we’ll explore an under-performed but not unknown opera, ‘Halka‘ (1854) by Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872). Considered the paradigmatic nationalist opera of Poland, the opera was later made into three films (1913, 1930/32, 1937).

A Somber but Noble Story

As a nationalist-oriented opera, the opera story’s of a socioeconomically unequal relationship, a poor girl’s love of a wealthier man, and his deceitful betrayal of her love which ends with him being forgiven and her suicide is wedded to its historical context. The opera’s original poetic material, ‘Halszka,’ by Włodzimierz Wolski from his collection, Old Tales and Images (1840), follows the same story, but one must see the opera and the poem in the wider landscape of Poland’s national history. A time of significant unknowns, the mid-19th century marked the fight for Poland’s independence, and ‘Halka,’ was as much a product as an ideological fighter in this regard. A strong aspect of the opera is Halka’s dance with moral pollution, tempted but rejecting the choice of burning her promised Jaśko in the church during his marriage ceremony to a wealthier land-owner’s daughter. Despite her suffering, the acts she committed out of grief, and the justification for enacting justice for her betrayal, she refrains from the act, and instead punishes herself. Killing herself as a way to absolve her sin of killing her own child as revenge, she then bestows blessings on her scorner. This tension exemplifies a key issue for Poland, namely the tension of one’s moral duty and justified violence. 

It’s notable to connect the opera’s first private showing (the ‘Vilnius version’) on January 1, 1848, with one of Poland’s most important conflicts of the 19th century, namely the Greater Polish Uprising of 1846 and the larger conflict against Prussian occupation for recognized independence. This conflict was largely fought by Polish peasants, with this fact of deep significance towards understanding the nationalist canonization of ‘Halka’ in Polish historical memory. The fight against foreign colonization defined most of Poland’s early-mid 19th century history. The vicissitudes of its independence, subjugation, and independence only continued with the January Uprising (1863-64), with the modern Poland we know today only established in 1989. Put into context, ‘Halka’ is considered among the operas of Glinka-like stature, that is a nationalist jewel in the crown of Polish culture alongside his operas like ‘The Raftsman‘ and ‘The Haunted Manor.’ Moniuszko’s ‘Halka’ was officially premiered in 1858 in its ‘Warsaw version,’ and this version became a nationalist gem. But it also reflected Moniuszko’s quasi-forced observation of compositional standards in his time.

Three Films, Years Apart

Moniuszko’s ‘Halka’ has three film adaptations. The first is from 1913 by Karol Wojciechowski. The second is from 1930 by Konstanty Meglicki, and the third from 1937 by Juliusz Gardan. Not much is known about the first, whilst the the second and the third were musical films, the latter starring none other than the great Polish coloratura, Ewa Bandrowska-Turska. Best known for her bel canto repertoire, she performed works of then-contemporary Polish composers like Tadeusz Kassern and Karol Szymanowski, and was the student of Helena Zboinska-Ruszkowska, colleague of Fyodor Chaliapin and instrumental Polish vocal pedagogue. These films were produced prior to WWII, and a good time after the emergence of Poland’s cinematic industry, dated to around 1899 following the invention of the cinematograph by the Lumières’ company. It’s interesting to note that Meglicki’s film was originally silent, only later integrated with sound in 1932, and featured the tenor, Wladyslaw Ladis-Kiepura, brother of Jan Kiepura.

By the late 1900s, Poland began producing silent films, animations, and later sound films inspired by national literature like ‘The Story of Sin’ (1933) and ‘On the Niemen’ (1939). The 1920s-30s was a particularly fruitful era for Polish post-WWI cinema, although sound film was generally initiated far later in Poland than elsewhere, with the first sound film being, ‘Anybody can love’ (1933). But as Joanna Preizner notes, “In Poland in the thirties…it was not the film studios that imposed their taste on the viewers, but the viewers forced the film industry to produce a certain type of film.” A rather ironic statement, the films and the opera share more than theme alone. However, the first cinematic blush of ‘Halka’ must be remembered to have started in the early 1910s, literally only years after one of Poland’s earliest silent films, ‘Antoś for the First Time in Warsaw’ (1908), and the effective beginning of Polish cinema itself abreast nationalist fervor. Thus, ‘Halka’ on screen was part of a larger push to integrate Polish culture and history with cinema, although more controversial was the shift from silent film to “talkies,” a particularly heated moment in the country’s history.

Although not technically about historical or patriotic themes per se, both ‘Halka’ films date to around when films of this nature were being produced. Moreover, melodramas were quite common at this time, with comedy films emerging from the mid 1930s onward, along with “socially useful” films like ‘Children must laugh’ (1936). The musical comedy, however, has its own history, with its beginning dated to 1930 with the film, ‘Mrs. Dulska’s Morality,’ by Boleslaw Niewolin, and compositionally initiated by the legendary Polish music theatre composer and arranger, Henryk Warszawski (1902-1977). Much like the times, music theatre films dealt with topicalities of the day, including but not limited to various dimensions of reality like socioeconomic inequality and the effects of ignored class divisions. On-screen emphasis was placed on integrating sound and image, cinematic drama with musical compliments, with the latter strategically utilized to enhance dialogue and on-screen developments in the plot and narrative. A wide array of composers were engaged in this work, from Roman Palester to Ludwik Starski and Piotr Perkowski, participants in the WWII Warsaw Uprising. By the 1930s, Polish film was alive, and musical films were a part of the industry’s expansion.

Depicting Moniuszko’s Opera on Film

As noted, the emergence of musical films in Polish film history began around the early 1930s, a time when the creation of sound films was not only technologically rudimentary but not altogether favored by critics and the public alike. The first true Polish sound film, ‘Anybody Can Love’ (1933), was a musical comedy, and it’s really something that the 1930s was a fruitful time for the genre. Moreover, their structure, “musical theater, farce, and Viennese operetta, or…German comedies,” as Marek Haltof notes, integrated with the patriotic dynamic at the time, but when discussing ‘Halka,’ it’s vital we remember the concurrent flourishing of melodrama, where topics typically seen as polemical like religion, female independence, poverty, crime, sexuality, morals, injustice, and social relations were giving voice. In this world, Meglicki’s ‘Halka’ (1930/32) emerged as a cross-roads between patriotic integration, silent-to-sound, and rising melodramatic impulse of Polish pre-WWII cinema. Like the later film, it featured key players of the day including not only Ladis-Kiepura but also singer Zuzanna Karin (Zofia Lindorfówna), a stage name as per convention. The film survives, and was presented in 2017 by the National Film Archive in Warsaw, and makes use of both versions.

In the 1930/1932 film, extreme effort is taken to capture the emotional intensity of each character and the story, using the eyes and physicality instead of dialogue, the necessity for increased gestures partnered with musical drama to produce the intended effect. However, the 1937 film does much of the same, using period clothing and on-location filming but because of the limitations of audio at the time, the dialogue scenes heavily emphasize a picture-based dynamic, with movement restricted creating an impression of paintings rather than a story unfolding on screen. However, Halka’s descent into madness is brilliantly captured by Liliana Zielińska, and is greatly aided by audio affordances which allows the viewer to feel her plight much deeper than the silent alternative. Her death, jumping off a cliff the churning rapids below, is relatively weak, and the use of music is far lower than one would imagine, limited to select moments throughout the film. But the film’s true ending, the wedding processional of Janusz and Zosia is incredibly powerful, with Halka’s death only momentarily noticed by Janusz. Themes of tragedy, marriage, love, and fate are seen in other films like ‘The Wedding Vow‘ (1937), and reflects a strain of 1930s Polish cinema dealing with the tensions of existence between the poles of divine and human. Whether Janusz is penitent remains still unknown.

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