A little more than a month after the riveting new animated short film Peter and the Wolf won an Academy Award® in the best animated short category, it airs on PBS during a month that Hugh Welchman, one the film’s producers, has called a “victory parade.”
Actually, the dates on Great Performances were booked before the film received the award. But as part of the heady follow-up from receiving the Oscar®, Welchman and his Oscar® statue have been in great demand, and are making the rounds—as well as occasionally setting off security alarms at the airport.
What’s it like to be the subject of this sudden notoriety? I spoke to Welchman on Monday from his London studio, Breakthru Films, where he described his whirlwind tour during the last month. He also talked about how he and Philharmonia Orchestra conductor Mark Stephenson came up with the idea for a modern interpretation of this Prokofiev piece that has served as an introduction to the orchestra for so many children; how he thinks videocassettes changed children’s listening habits; how director Suzie Templeton got arrested by the F.S.B. (the renamed K.G.B.) in Russia while researching the film; and upcoming plans for a Chopin film.
Jennifer Melick: So what has it been like for you since winning the Oscar® for Peter and the Wolf on February 24?
Hugh Welchman: It’s been completely crazy—lots of things to do. I had 3,000 e-mails to start with [laughs]. I had to go through all of those. Then obviously a lot of people connected with the project suddenly got in touch with me, and I had to do things like go over to Poland and go meet the minister of culture, because we made the film in Poland, and so had to do a kind of victory tour. Then off to Russia. Yeah, it’s been pretty crazy. read more
During the past year, one of the upbeat stories in the classical-music business has been the proliferation of opera in movie theaters.
The Metropolitan Opera, under its new general manager, Peter Gelb, jump-started this trend last season with its high-definition simulcasts, which have proved so successful that now other opera houses—including Royal Opera, Covent Garden; La Scala; San Francisco Opera—are jumping on the bandwagon.
Hearts in operaworld are aflutter. The rest of the world has finally caught on to the wonder and beauty of opera, by the simple virtue of its increased accessibility—and the $22 ticket price, far lower than a seat in most opera theaters. The reality, as reported in a Sunday 3/23 front-page article in The New York Times is a bit different. Cinema chains, looking for ways to stay profitable, have discovered that opera is a reliable modest source of income because opera-lovers will still pay money to go to the opera, even when theaters’ main source of revenue from moviegoers is dipping. If I had to guess, I’d say most of the people going to the cinema to hear opera not newcomers to our art form: they are the same people you see at the Metropolitan Opera or Lyric Opera of Chicago or San Francisco Opera. read more
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