The Scottish play- Macbeth Twelfth Night or What You Will Jenufa: From a brief news item in Moravia to a universal opera Bob Swaim on Bob l’Americain Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District: Thriller and Psychodrama Stage-director Jossi Wieler and Dramaturge Sergio Morabito discuss their production of Ariadne auf Naxos Naxos: geographical location and spiritual landscape The Marriage of Figaro: Mozart follows Beaumarchais “Così fan tutte” Giuseppe Verdi’s main work Don Carlo Stray Thoughts on the Comedy of Verdi’s “Falstaff” “Fledermaus” Music – a matter for the heart

Bob Swaim on Bob I'Amerikaner

I grew up with popular American culture in the late fifties. I am a child of rock ’n roll and comic books, fast food, B-movies – typical middle-class American culture.
In the mid sixties, I came to Europe and was exposed to a very different culture – and a different way of looking at the world. It was at this time that I also discovered what we call in America, the “fine arts” – classical music, opera, ballet, painting, etc. It’s not that these things don’t exist in America because they certainly do, but for many middle class kids like myself growing up during this time – this was the age of McCarthyism, we didn’t have the exposure to those things or we just weren’t interested.

Bob Swaim aged five

It wasn’t until I was studying at the university in California that my life took another direction. I found myself in a new environment, met new and interesting friends, teachers, and most important, I realised that there was something else out there, a whole new world awaited me. So as a student I decided to come to Europe and I spent one of my summer holidays hitchhiking throughout the continent and saw another way of life. It was a truly liberating experience. Aware that there was another kind of life outside Los Angeles I decided to go back to Europe and live in France. At that time, due to my passion for literature, I wanted to be a writer like Henry Miller, or Hemingway. When you’re 21 everything seems possible, so without a second thought, I packed my rucksack and came to France. And it’s in France, some thirty years ago that I became an opera buff as well as a film director.

An American in Paris and a contract with mgm in Hollywood

People often ask me if, after all these years living in France, do I feel more French than American. The truth is that when I’m in America I feel very “European” and Americans perceive me as such and when I’m in France I feel more Amer-ican than French. I would say that, more than anything, I am a Parisian. I have lived in Paris for 32 years. Despite the fact that I have spent most of my adult life in France, the French still see me as “Bob l’Americain”… probably because I still have that irresistible American accent.
The fact is that you can never deny your roots and I have obviously brought with me a lot of cultural baggage from America – but basically I am a kind of Europeanised American. I’m a product of two cultures. My adopted continent is Europe, so I feel very comfortable here. I think my sensibilities are probably divided between Europe and America. A reviewer of one of my films wrote that my film had American pacing and rhythm but European sensitivities. I think that kind of sums up where I’m coming from. I began my career in films in France and made many films there, one of which, “La Balance” (1982), was very successful and won many French Oscars. It travelled all over the world and was such an international art house hit that MGM signed a contract with me. With this Studio contract as a writer, director and producer, I went to Hollywood – and hated it. This was in the mid- 80s.

Bob Swaim today

I made several pictures for the studio, like “Masquerade” (1988, with Rob Low and Meg Tilly) which was very popular. I did another film called “Half Moon Street” with Michael Caine and Sigourney Weaver, and that was a big hit internationally, but I hated Los Angeles, I hated Hollywood … I felt too un-Hollywood to fit in. I was unhappy, frustrated and bored. So I decided to go back to France. There, I started a production company and produced 12 films for television. Then I went to Italy and lived there for two years and made a big, epic, peplum film, “L’Atlantide. Three months shooting in Cinecittà, then in Morocco. “L’Atlantide” (1992) was based on the Pierre Benoit novel of the same name. Although the film wasn’t successful, it was an interesting professional adventure and also a wonderful human experience living in Rome among the Romans and it greatly affected my personal and artistic development.
A few years ago I did a film called “The Climb” (1997), which won an important prize – the UNICEF Prize for Best Feature – at the Berlin Film Festival and Gerard Mortier saw this film and loved it. He particularly liked my work with actors, so he asked me: “Would you like to do an opera?” And I answered, “I’ve only waited 30 years for somebody to ask me that.” – This is how my collaboration with him began.
Then came the question of what opera? Gerard Mortier mentioned several operas but then he thought for a minute and said “Jenufa”. At that time, I knew little about Janácek and I had never heard his “Jenufa”. But when I finally did listen to it I fell immediately in love with it and was amazed at Mortier’s incredible intuition in choosing this particular opera for me to direct. I couldn’t have found, for a first opera, something that suited me as well as “Jenufa”. It is a wonderfully romantic, tragic love story. It is about impossible love, about people who do the wrong thing, but for the right reasons and suffer the consequences of their acts. It is complex, contradictory, bordering on the melodramatic and full of dramatic tension and conflict – those very same elements I look for in films… So when Mortier intuitively said, “‘Jenufa’ is for you”, he was absolutely right.