When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.
To be honest, there is a tourists’ trail; my family had a farm and a gas station, and you can go and see my birthplace, though where I lived is actually under a freeway now.
One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I’ve seen it three times, is Bondarchuk’s ‘War and Peace.’ Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.
Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.
