DISTANT HARMONY: PAVAROTTI IN CHINA: Oscar Winner DeWitt Sage & The Trip Of A Lifetime

The 30^th Anniversary Edition of director DeWitt Sage’s award-winning feature documentary Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China is now available from Giant Pictures, the digital film distribution division of Giant Interactive, on digital platforms worldwide & DVD.

In 1986, Luciano Pavarotti was invited to Beijing to present La Bohème, conduct master classes and perform concerts for more than 150 million people. Academy Award-winning filmmaker DeWitt Sage captured every moment of Pavarotti’s travels, from the tenor’s famously cheerful exchanges with local singers to the inevitable clash of cultures.

DeWitt Sage spoke exclusively with Film Inquiry about the restoration and re-release of Distant Harmony, and his recollections of the remarkable trip.

Jim Dixon for Film Inquiry: So we’re here today to talk about the re-release of Distant Harmony.

DeWitt Sage: Right? This is new territory for me because it’s being re-released on platforms, which is new to me, which is a bad commentary on how old I am. [laughs]

You’re probably not much older than me, so I wouldn’t worry about that. It wasn’t that long ago I learned how to turn on computers myself. It was 30 years ago that you went to Beijing with Pavarotti. You must have some pretty vivid memories of making a trip that momentous.

DeWitt Sage: I do and part of this drama, to tell you the truth was before we got on the plane. I didn’t come with [Pavarotti and his entourage]. But Luciano [Pavarotti] had decided that he wanted this trip filmed by an American film crew. So he called a guy called John Goberman, who is a good friend of mine now, who was the producer, the vendor and everything of “Live from Lincoln Center.” And John suggested me because I just done a film at the San Francisco Opera, which was about the making of an opera.

It happened that Luciano and a rather tempestuous soprano named Renata Scotto were in the opera, and she became very upset at the end of the opera on opening night because he got one more curtain call than she did. And she exploded on camera. We were at this point back in her dressing room. And she just she let Luciano have it, the Opera House have it—in English and Italian. Luciano liked the film—not because of Renata—And so that’s how that’s how I got the nod to be the chief force in this China tour, which was very much last minute, which is as you know, not a way to make any film, let alone going to China.

The drama was simply explaining to Luciano that he had a film in mind that I didn’t think I was the right guy to make. And so there I was, in his apartment on the Champs Élysées in Paris, to discuss the movie. And I said to him, “The film you want is about your Pavarotti Competition winners.” In Philadelphia, there was a Pavarotti singing competition, and he wanted me to do a biography of each of the singers as they came off the plane in Beijing. And I said to him that, I’m just not going to be any good at that. Now I certainly didn’t get up and walk out. I was very meek and intimidated. But somehow by the next morning, he had changed his mind. He said, “You do, you do, you do.” And so I did.

It was just that it was so last minute, I had no way to get into China. I had to go to Hong Kong and went alone to buy a visa because that was a way you could possibly get into China. We couldn’t get a visa from the Chinese government at that point, not because they would have held out, but because we didn’t have time. I think we had maybe two and a half months advance notice that this was going to happen. And there was no money—that had to be raised—I had to hire a crew— And anyway, it was trouble. It looked like big trouble.

And for younger audiences, at least those who weren’t around in the 1980s travel to the People’s Republic of China was a lot less common then than it even is now.

DeWitt Sage: Much less, much less. And there were no direct flights from anywhere we knew about. So, as I said, I had to go to Hong Kong, and literally go up to a window like in a post office. And they gave me-they sold me one for I think it was $53…I don’t remember. They sold me the visa. Wonderful-looking with stamps. Multi-colored. And that’s what got me into China. I had no place to stay, I didn’t have a real visa. As you just correctly said, it was very new that Americans or anybody from the Western world was going to China. There were virtually no cars in Beijing—there was only one western style Hotel in Beijing. People look at this now they’re shocked that there are horses and bicycles basically on the streets.

In the movie, Pavarotti himself comments on that and how it reminds him of his childhood in Italy. What was your access to Pavarotti like while he was in China?

DeWitt Sage: Complete, no complaints on that front. But Arthur Miller‘s ex-wife told a friend of mine that this is going to be the end of DeWitt. And she said, “What do you mean?” Arthur Miller wrote a book about mounting a production of Death of a Salesman in Beijing. And they had three weeks to do this. And for the first two weeks, he was paralyzed by jet lag. He couldn’t do anything. And I had about the same amount of time. It’s a wonderful book. I wish to Hell I hadn’t read it. It finished me before I got on the plane.

So it’s tough when you know ahead of time that you’re going to be exhausted and unable to function?

DeWitt Sage: I was quite bland when we took off, quite comfortable. I don’t know why I think—I was going nuts. But I had a lot of reinforcements from the producers. Everybody in the United States, of course. I got to China and the reality started dawning. It took it took me a week to get a van and have the seats removed for the film crew. And the van wasn’t even big enough. But it was that kind of thing. Everything was more or less impossible.

No just running over to U-Haul and getting a truck?

DeWitt Sage: [laughs] Right, exactly. And Ministry of Culture officials had to clear absolutely everything. I think I met with them daily.

So what was Pavarotti like to work with? I mean, those of us who are fans of his had this teddy bear image of him.

DeWitt Sage: It’s a good question. Luciano was jet lagged the way all of us were, but he of course arrives on the Pope’s aircraft—an Alitalia 747.

The Pope’s own aircraft? Like his Air Force One…?

DeWitt Sage: Yes. And of course he was cosseted and surrounded by every possible comfort that they could provide. But I admired his ability to just turn into a professional and get the voice tuned up and perform. Luciano was a professional. He was tough—he wasn’t cuddly, working with him. He was under stress and pressure. It wasn’t that he had a short temper, just that he wanted everything done, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that adds to a film director’s stress, let’s put it that way. But he, on the other hand, Luciano in public did become a warm and cuddly creature. And he became that also with children. And I think the weird thing is that that part of Luciano is real. In other words, it’s as if he flips a switch. You would you initially think This must be a performance. But it actually isn’t. It’s actually him. It’s confusing, if that make any sense.

It does. In your film, we see him when he has just landed and China and he’s very gracious with the local press, and very self-effacing and obviously, there they arranged performances for him to watch with Chinese children singing, playing instruments, performing gymnastics, and he seems completely enamored of them. He seems to be totally entranced by the children’s performances and seemed to really be enjoying himself.

DeWitt Sage: I agree. And, you know the camera easily picks up things—you could spot, especially with the amount of time we were doing these public events, non-singing events, if he were faking it. You know, we all are seasoned watchers of movies and documentaries with no filter in there. And I agree with you.  He was entranced.

Although we do see some of that business edge, the professionalism, that you were just describing, in some of the rehearsal footage in Distant Harmony, where he is a little more businesslike and you can see that he was a very experienced performer and he knew what he needed.

DeWitt Sage: Right, right.

And of course, he was used to being catered to, I would imagine.

DeWitt Sage: Yes, I think that’s absolutely true. I mean, at this point in his career, Luciano was slightly larger than you think. Not the wide belly, I’m talking about his height—he was I think about six one. So he when he walked in, the air went out of a room. His presence was extremely commanding, but it was in large measure commanding because you knew there was a golden gift in that person. And he was used to most of the world responding to his image as much as his voice, you know, so he was walking through a world and that bowed and scraped—or was in awe—is a better way to put it.

I think I can almost anticipate the answer to my next question, but I’ve noticed that Pavarotti had a large, multicolored scarf or shawl with him almost any time that he wasn’t onstage. What was that about?

DeWitt Sage: In my opinion, it was to cover his girth.

[laughs] I thought you were going to say to avoid catching a chill.

DeWitt Sage: That’s true, but that was a different. It was more a muffler kind of scarf. And there might be this. It was it was a bit of camouflage. He just felt—this is my opinion—he felt more comfortable than he would have with his belly only behind a shirt.

I have to believe that having a gift of that magnitude is blessing and a curse. Pavarotti was a contemporary of [Placido] Domingo, and between the two of them, you’ve clearly got the two greatest tenors of their age living at the same time. But to have a voice like that—I mean, human beings aren’t supposed to be able to do that—to have a voice like that, you’ve got to know that you have an obligation to share it with the world, and that you also have to take care of it.

DeWitt Sage: Absolutely. And, I think I’d be a lot more paranoid about the voice, the protection of it, but I never talked to Luciano about that aspect. And although we had total access, the total access didn’t mean I could walk into his apartment in the Beijing hotel. It was at arm’s length, but there was so much media all over the place, even though we supposedly had an exclusive on this tour. I finally just said to the crew, we just have to accept all these people swarming around as part of the atmosphere and not try and cut them out. Because we won’t be able to function. And somehow that kind of worked. I wanted to create the idea that we the audience were on an adventure. But we’re inside that adventure. I didn’t want Luciano surrounded—he had a big, big entourage from Italy. That 747 was not empty. And I didn’t want any of that because it just seemed to demystify the whole trip.

Your film certainly captures the media frenzy that surrounded him with the Chinese media. Reporters seemed to be virtually everywhere. Your film climaxes with his concert at the Great Hall of the People with a mammoth audience. You show the faces of some of the people in the audience who seemed completely transfixed by the performance, and I was struck by the fact that once or twice they applaud ahead of the number almost like they were at a rock concert.

DeWitt Sage: Exactly. [Luciano] says at one point in the film…“You know that the the people responded here when they hear the introduction to ‘O Sole Mio’ like the people in Napoli.” And also the Chinese [audiences] weren’t accustomed to opera etiquette, like you wait until the aria’s over [to applaud], and they were standing and screaming in the middle of an aria. I thought it was fantastic—that energy.

We were there when Hu Yaobang, the paramount leader of the Communist Party and of China, at that point, when he invited Luciano to sing at the Great Hall of the People, which is a little like asking a singer to come and perform in front of the Senate and the House at the State of the Union, but instead of there being whatever number that would be the 10,000 Senators and Representatives…That’s what the Great Hall is. It’s the Holy of Holies. And so that was a huge honor and was not anticipated, and was a gigantic help to me as a climax, not that anyone was thinking about that.  [Luciano] really did extremely well.

I also want to mention one other thing about Luciano. Even though he was a demanding professional, he was certainly capable of acts of kindness. I don’t mean charity. One thing that comes to mind is that we had a one-sheet, a poster of Luciano in China, with a child on his shoulder, and it was pretty much all over town, the town being New York City, and my son Dylan had been in the children’s chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. Dylan was about eight, nine, not much more than that. And, bizarrely enough, he had some stage business, some interaction with Luciano in the opera, which I can’t remember the name of because all I was doing was concentrating on my son.

After the opera, I go backstage to pick up my son, and I have a copy of the one-sheet for Luciano to autograph. Instead of just going into the dressing room, which I could have done, we just waited in the line. He had no idea my son was in the opera. And when we came in, he took the poster and instead of autographing it, and he asked me to autograph it for him. I thought that was a lovely thing. He did love the movie. When it came to the showing of the film in an editing room, I might add, he was very much taken with it. But I thought that was a generous gesture in front of me and my son. But I thought also he meant it.

That is the sort of moment you’re going to carry with you forever. Judging from the film, I think he was in spectacular voice when he was in China. My father was a prodigious opera buff, and I literally grew up with “Live at the Met” on Saturday afternoons. And I have to say the rendition he does in the film of “Vesti la giubba” is maybe the best modern version I’ve heard.

DeWitt Sage: Right? He was in fantastic voice. And you know, it’s odd because he was not in fantastic physical shape. He was almost as heavy as I ever saw him—I never knew what that was nor did I push that point—but he was having trouble moving around the stage, yet the voice was at its prime. When he came and looked at the film in the editing room in New York—we were using—it now seems like an ancient machine, a Steenbeck—so you have reels of film and reels of sound going at the same time…Herbert Breslin, now deceased, said to Luciano, “Luciano, you were in fabulous voice.”

Herbert Breslin was a servant, a powerful servant to Luciano…But it’s the only time I ever heard anyone say to Luciano, your voice was in especially good form. I don’t know whether – I don’t know if it meant anything to him or not. It’s just a tiny moment, but for some reason I think of it. It’s as if you were with Ted Williams and he’s hit a home run. You don’t say “Gosh, you were really playing well tonight.”

I can imagine. I mean, he must have been used to that. And it would almost seem presumptuous to tell the greatest living tenor, “Oh, by the way, you sounded good tonight.”

DeWitt Sage:  Exactly. It would seem presumptuous.

I don’t want to be indelicate, but I noticed that Madelyn Renée played Musetta in the production of La Bohème Pavarotti did in Beijing—and as Mr. Breslin kind of blew any secret about the fact that they were an item in his own book—was that apparent at the time?

DeWitt Sage: I knew it at the time. And Madelyn, who I think has a terrific voice. He first met her at a master class. I did know it. But you know, it was bizarre because in the background, Mrs. Pavarotti was there. She had been his very much his manager always up until that point, and by manager, I mean, ran all the business affairs for Luciano Incorporated, so to speak. I was very fond of her. She was sensitive, and kind. And she was just was completely present. Everyone took her not for granted, but she was part of the inner sanctum.

So she’s there in the background at most of these public events…And, and I was very pleased that in a master class, one of the students saying was that, you know Musetta’s Waltz, it’s [Madelyn’s] audition in the master class, and that I knew at the time—I think I knew what at the time, when you when you don’t know what the hell you’re going to be doing by the end of the shoot. But you know, I saw this was going to be great because I could intercut this with the actual performance of Bohéme. But anyway, that’s what happened. I wasn’t trying to get Madelyn in the film, but I love the piece of music. And she sang it beautifully. And so it worked out.

It just was taken for granted that [Madelyn] was with Luciano romantically as well as administratively. And it just somehow didn’t matter. If we’d been doing a different type of movie, or if that really – if I’d been a different type of filmmaker, I would have gone for that. But I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. It was beside the point.

You had two directors of photography on the project. One of them the great Miroslav Ondŕicek. You were shooting on film?

DeWitt Sage: Super 16, which is 16 millimeter film with one sprocket, which actually gives it about 30% more detail. And the blow-up was fantastic. And then when we went up to 4K and then 2K, which is what you’re seeing? If you’ve got a good copy, which I hope you do, it’s amazing. It’s absolutely, I was able to color-correct, redefine—meaning refocus shots in a way that we never could have in in 1987.

The visual quality was very good. It’s a very handsome-looking film. And the sound is excellent. I take it you’re pleased with the digital conversion.

DeWitt Sage: Thrilled, although I don’t know if anyone’s ever going to see it.

Well, we’re going to try to bring it to the public’s attention. It should be seen. And especially now that we’re all talking about China again. All of a sudden, politically it’s relevant.

DeWitt Sage: Right. And, and the one thing that I’ve never done, which is sounds crazy, but this film was shot in Dolby Surround, which is a license, and they actually had someone with you, when the film was finished going to all the theaters, I was amazed by this. But the sound quality. And the picture, when we did the digital corrections, that was three years ago, we did it with a wonderful color correction, really artist. But we were doing it on a big screen on a 35 millimeter screen, and it looks fantastic. And so I was really thinking that we gotta get into one of the few theaters in New York just to see this thing in 2K. We down-converted to 2K, and I’ve never done that. So we kind of tried to have an opening of some kind, but money is non-existent in this case. It’s going to be available for digital download and on YouTube, Amazon, YouTube. I think almost every platform. Certainly Apple TV.

One final thing I wanted to mention, because as you said, Pavarotti was at a fairly large size at the time he made this trip, yet you got him on a bicycle.

DeWitt Sage: We were actually right at the edge of Tiananmen Square. That particular day it was about 140 degrees in Tiananmen Square. He’s riding by The Forbidden City. I unfortunately can’t take credit for saying “Luciano, why don’t we try a bicycle.” But I think one of my producers said why don’t we do this…We were surrounded by bicycles. And as a kid, of course, in the streets that [Luciano] described, he was always riding a bicycle. And so it was it seemed perfectly natural. What wasn’t natural was we had to rig another bicycle and put the terrific cameraman Richard Gordon strapped on the back of it. And the only thing I said to them was you’ve got to let Luciano ride into the shot. Don’t pan with him, you’re just holding a steady frame. And then all of a sudden in he comes. That was my only contribution. I was just praying that we weren’t going to have a fatality in the process.

It’s a very whimsical and wonderful moment in the film and I think that’s one of the ways we like to remember Luciano Pavarotti.

DeWitt Sage: I thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed this very much.

Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China is available now on Apple TV, Amazon Video and DVD.