This weekend, I saw the newest Batman movie,
The Dark Knight. Pretty amazing stuff. This morning, I thought back to part of the previous installment,
Batman Begins, which has a connection to our classical music discussions here.
A key event in young Bruce Wayne’s life leads to him becoming the vigilante hero Batman. As a boy, his parents are murdered in front of him. The murder is most often depicted as happening outside of a theater. In several versions, Bruce Wayne goes to the movies with his parents. The movie he sees—
The Mask of Zorro—influences the imagery he adopts as Batman, a masked crusader.
For
Batman Begins, they chose to have the young Bruce Wayne and his parents attend an opera, instead of a movie.
What opera did the boy who would become Batman see that night?
Johann Strauss Jr.’s
Die Fledermaus [The Bat] would match in name, but as a comic opera, it would be a bit light-hearted for the genesis of such a dark and dramatic character. (
click here to listen to a brief sample)
Instead, they used a scene from
Arrigo Boito’s
Mefistofele (
click here for a brief sample, or you can hear the whole opera online through
NPR Music). The Faust/Mephistopheles story is a common in opera and other art forms, but Boito’s opera is pretty obscure. Boito’s music is less often heard than his words; his main claim to fame is writing the librettos for Verdi’s
Faust and
Otello, along with several other operas. But the idea of a
Faustian bargain, along with the themes of pride and defiance, resonates with Batman’s tale.
This opera is only in the movie for a few brief moments. But it leads me to think—could Batman, whose story has been told in comics, movies, books, and TV shows, be the subject of an opera?
Recently, stories that are known as movies are making their way on to opera stages, including
The Fly and
Brokeback Mountain (the story, not the movie is the point of the departure for that one, but can the movie be ignored?)
Could some opera singer find himself taking the stage in Batman’s mask and cape? Since Batman’s a conflicted hero, I’d cast him as a baritone. Any other thoughts on what Batman’s operatic debut would look and sound like?
Bonus: Parts of
The Dark Knight were filmed in Chicago—anyone see the banner for the
Lyric Opera during the car chase scene?