Finally got to see THE GLASS MOUNTAIN and was much impressed with the stars, Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray, Valentina Cortese, the location shooting in Venice and the Italian Dolomites, and the opera score by Nino Rota.
Story centers on sensitive composer (Denison) who marries (Gray) on the eve of WW II. He's shot down in the mountains and is saved by a local girl (Cortese) who nurses him back to health and tells him the myths about the doomed lovers who haunt the Glass Mountain, which looms over the village. His imagination is stirred. The war ends and he returns to England but his heart is in the mountains so he goes back to Italy and Cortese to write his opera, weaving bits of local folk music (a la Grieg) into his themes. At the debut of his opera at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Cortese receives word that the estranged wife's plane has gone off course and crashed in the mountains because she wanted to see the Glass Mountain. Pure soap, but very effective.
There is a lengthy and beautifully staged sequence of the opera's climax with a terrific score by Nino Rota and sung by Tito Gobbi and Elena Rizzieri.
This was an English-Italian production directed by Henry Cass, who I don't think I've ever heard of.
Story centers on sensitive composer (Denison) who marries (Gray) on the eve of WW II. He's shot down in the mountains and is saved by a local girl (Cortese) who nurses him back to health and tells him the myths about the doomed lovers who haunt the Glass Mountain, which looms over the village. His imagination is stirred. The war ends and he returns to England but his heart is in the mountains so he goes back to Italy and Cortese to write his opera, weaving bits of local folk music (a la Grieg) into his themes. At the debut of his opera at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Cortese receives word that the estranged wife's plane has gone off course and crashed in the mountains because she wanted to see the Glass Mountain. Pure soap, but very effective.
There is a lengthy and beautifully staged sequence of the opera's climax with a terrific score by Nino Rota and sung by Tito Gobbi and Elena Rizzieri.
This was an English-Italian production directed by Henry Cass, who I don't think I've ever heard of.