Opera Notices

CAMILLE

Thursday, April 7, 2011
7:00pm: Introduction 7:20pm: Film

Vancity Theatre, Vancouver International Film Centre
1181 Seymour Street

Regular admission: $11/$9 senior or student
(includes $2 Vancity Film Centre membership).
More about the Vancity Theatre

Directed by: George Cukor
(USA, 1936, 109 mins)
DVD
Starring Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Daniell, Elizabeth Allan.

Named one of the top 100 movies ever made by Time magazine and based on the same novel and play as Giuseppe Verdi’s great opera La Traviata (La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils), Camille is a tragic love story about a courtesan, Marguerite, and her handsome young suitor, Armand.

Produced in the finest MGM style, and directed by the studio’s most sensitive director of actresses, George Cukor, Camille is remembered above all for Greta Garbo’s expressive and luminous performance. In Marguerite, the iconic 1930s siren finds a vessel for her own ambivalence towards Hollywood. Garbo suggests warmth, sensuality, irony and introspection in gestures of rare delicacy and insight.

Camille will be introduced by national film journalist Katherine Monk. Ms.Monk's writing appears in National Post, The Vancouver Sun and Province, The Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald and Ottawa Citizen among others. She is also a regular contributor for CBC Radio’s On the Coast and Global BC’s Early News. Ms. Monk is a voting member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and the Writers’ Union of Canada. In addition to her duties as a film writer, Ms. Monk teaches and lectures at Simon Fraser University, the University of Alaska, McGill University’s Centre for Canadian Studies and Capilano University. Her first book Weird Sex and Snowshoes and Other Canadian Film Phenomena (Raincoast Books, 2001) hit the bestseller list and was adapted to the screen by Omni Film.

Camille is presented in association with Vancouver Opera’s production of La Traviata, April 30 to May 12th. Verdi’s most popular opera is realized in a gorgeous new co-production directed by Sir Jonathan Miller. Sumptuous parties, passionate encounters and intimate scenes of tragic tenderness, together with dramatic and vocal intensity from beginning to end, make this a magnificent opera experience.

Seating is limited. This special event continues a series of co-presentations between Vancouver Opera and the Vancity Theatre.