PG | 1h 50min | Comedy , Musical | 24 September 1982
A famous opera singer, Giorgio Fini, loses his voice during an American tour. He goes to a female throat specialist, Pamela Taylor, whom he falls in love with.
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Stars: Luciano Pavarotti, Kathryn Harrold, Eddie Albert.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084931/
Watched
online, fuzzy print.
17 songs in the Soundtracks.
The doctor comes to him, he doesn't go to her.
3.9 average rating with 560+ IMDb votes. I cannot imagine why the rating is so low. It's not a great film, but not a turkey.
What I don't like: the plot and the female lead. What I like: the singing, except I Left My Heart In San Francisco, which is not adjusted for tenor.
The plot is LP, with wife & 2 kids back in Italy, has the "right" to his own "personal life", so he pursues the doctor, perhaps just because she resists him and dislikes opera.
He conquers her, and then makes her promise not to fall in love with him. <eyeroll> She promises, but later does, and gets him to claim to love her too. <eyeroll 2>
Subplot: he refuses to sing at the Met because of a big fiasco during his performance 7 years earlier; the description is bad, not trivial. But his new "love" talks him into appearing when they need him in a week to sing in Turandot, but it's in a kitchen where he's preparing a meal for a large group, and they get into a food fight. (The excess of whipped cream topped pies was a big tip off.) When he gets to the Met, they have a ridiculous giant mechanical dragon onstage, which malfunctions during rehearsal.
He does show for the performance, the audience gives him a standing ovation when he first walks onstage. He sings Nessun dorma, twice, the second is an encore. The doctor is in the audience, but leaves during the encore, blowing him a kiss goodbye, and The End.
KH has no appeal, either before or after he lands her. She makes a good doctor, but not a romantic interest for LP. I don't know whom I would have cast instead, but it's just flat. Maybe Ann-Margaret? It's been almost 20 years since Bye Bye Birdie ('63).
Frankly, watching LP in a real opera is much better. But as he says on Letterman in Oct'82, this film hopes (in theatres then) to attract more people to opera. Maybe if it had better chemistry between the leads.
EA plays LP's long-time manager.
MGM, dir. Schaffner; 6+
Update 6Nov2020: Upgrading to 6+. Still don't like the leading lady, but like the film. I'm binging on LP nowadays, and he sings plenty here. Having consumed a lot of Met performances since my first comments, the scenes at the "Met" don't look very realistic. The house & stage are too small, L.Mitchell sang Liu, not Turandot, and the attitude of the stagehands botching the dragon is much too relaxed.
