by Maria do Rosário Caetano
“Has anyone ever seen a director dressed in a tailcoat (yes, that tuxedo topped with a showy tail) presenting a film at a Brazilian film festival?
That’s what happened at FAM (Florianópolis Audiovisual Mercosul). Filmmaker Yves Goulart, from Santa Catarina living in the USA, appeared on stage at Cine Show Beiramar Shopping, dressed to the nines. The contrast was stark, as everyone present (the cinema was packed with spectators from Urussanga, Blumenau and even Foz do Iguaçu in Paraná) were dressed in ordinary clothes.
Snobbery from dressed-up Yves Goulart? No, he explained when presenting the feature documentary Aldo Baldin – A Life for Music, one of those selected for the main FAM competition (for Latin American films). It was — he explained — an ‘affectionate tribute’ to his character, the tenor from Santa Catarina Aldo Baldin (1945-1994), who had a career in Europe, with Germany as his base territory.
What’s more: the coat was donated by Irene Flesh Baldin, the artist’s widow, and responsible for the film’s musical score. The tenor, originally from the same city where Yves would be born 30 years later (Urussanga, in the countryside of Santa Catarina), had worn the same tailcoat in his last performances.
‘I spent 14 years making this film,’ said the director, who graduated in cinema in Rio de Janeiro. (…) He, in person, played key roles in the production process: he wrote the script, he did the photography direction, the editing, the executive production and the direction.
Does the outcome reveal amateurism? Not at all. All the testimonies gathered — from Isaac Karabtchevsky, Edino Krieger, Helmut Rilling, Hera Lind, Neville Martinez, Rolf Beck, Celso Antunes, Fernando Portari (there are 34 in total) — are framed with style and technical quality. And they make us forget that we will hear more than three dozen ‘talking heads’, as the filmmaker managed to gather rich archive material.
The most valuable of them is the testimony recorded by Baldin, on a cassette recorder, a few months (and days) before his premature death, at the age of 49. Also of high quality are the testimonies of the widow and her young daughters, Serena and Sofia, who were children when their father died of a heart attack. And the footage is extremely valuable. In other words, recordings of opera performances and recitals in which the Brazilian tenor participated on the most diverse stages in Europe (in particular, in Germany, where he settled and died), Asia (Japan), the Middle East (Israel), Latin America (Argentina and Brazil, most prominently).
(…)
Films about artists (or names that stood out in politics or science) tend to generate true hagiographies. Nobody wants to say bad things about a dead person. In the case of Aldo Baldin, who came from poverty, triumphed in Europe and died early, everything leads us to hope for the biopic of a winner, ‘despite all the regrets’. But this will not happen in Yves Goulart’s film, despite 34 glowing testimonies (31, if we exclude his widow and daughters). But the film has a dissonant voice.
And who is the critical voice of Aldo Baldin – A Life for Music? The answer, surprisingly, comes from Aldo Baldin himself. In a frank statement, given to the cassette recorder himself — the material would be used as the basis of a small autobiographical book, which his premature death prevented him from writing —, the renowned tenor recalls his poor childhood, his family of nine brothers (all of whom, apart from him, were settlers-farmers), his parents who wanted him to be a priest (a source of pride for a family of Italian immigrants) and were never interested in lyrical singing, the reason for the artist’s existence.
To make matters worse — Aldo will remember in his testimony — his physical type was not what was expected for a lyrical tenor. He was short, bald, chubby. Amid flashy, tall and handsome tenors, he looked like the ugly duckling. Many wanted Baldin to turn into a buffo tenor, one who played comic roles in operas. He resisted as long as he could, insisting on lyrical singing and dividing himself between recording a hundred albums and teaching. He became one of the most respected professors. And he stayed away from the buffoon character.
(…)
Aldo Baldin – A Life for Music is a documentary of classical construction, but one that is interesting to watch. After all, despite the tiny budget, it was made with passion and obstinacy.”
