Distant Harmony Pavarotti in China
Directed by Dewitt Sage
Written by Documentary
Starring Luciano Pavarotti
Release Date February 4th 1988
Published September 27th, 2019
In 1986, in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of starting his world famous career in opera, Luciano Pavarotti went to China. As only a man of his superstar stature could Pavarotti booked a three week tour in the cloistered and controlled environment of Communist China. It was, at once, a historic moment of cultural exchange and an exchange of propaganda. The documentary, Pavarotti in China was created to further the propaganda on both sides, one slightly less sinister than the other.
With its heavily sanitized take on the Chinese approach to art and the 'openness' of the Chinese government, Pavarotti in China was a win for the Communist regime of then President Deng Xioaping. But it was also a win for Pavarotti who was paid handsomely for the trip. Pampered as few western stars would be, Pavarotti smiles and pretends that all that is happening is mere publicity. If he's aware that he's providing cover for what we know are human rights abuses and state sponsored censorship, Pavarotti is happy to feign ignorance on camera.
This week, that documentary, retitled Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China, is being re-released to theaters. Why? Perhaps it is to celebrate 30 years since the documentary was completed and released. Or, it could just be that a small company acquired the rights to a documentary and decided that there was a buck to be made in retitling it and peddling it on the digital marketplace for the first time in the 30 years since it was released.
Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China opens with an odd and off-kilter trip into some uniquely Chinese customs. Art in China, in broad strokes, has a bombastic, colorful and intense style that is a lot for a westerner like myself to take in and begin to reckon with. The tradition known as kabuki has had plenty of exposure in the west but it has most often been used to demonstrate bombast, pomp and circumstance, a shorthand burlesque of ancient Chinese tradition.
Here, it is used to demonstrate just how unique Pavarotti was from what audiences in China were used to in art. Western opera was slowly becoming a part of everyday culture in China, its innocuous, bellowing love ballads and richly dense orchestration always proved safe for the communist censors sensitive to the potential infiltration of ideas of freedom as symbolized by so much of American popular culture.
Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China was directed by veteran Dewitt Sage who, based on the evidence at hand in the documentary, was happy to focus on Pavarotti's big smiling face while turning a blind eye to state sponsored censorship and well known human rights abuses. Pavarotti is show to be excited to perform before an audience which pays most of their monthly income to see him. The audience has no choice but to do this, attendance at Pavarotti's concert was mandated by the government.
So, families starved specifically so that they could attend Pavarotti's performance. That, of course, is never mentioned in the doc. You find that out with a simple Google search though which doesn't shine a great light on either the documentary or Pavarotti who had to have known while he was there who he was performing for. That said, the documentary is desperately careful to avoid anything that shines an even slightly negative light on China and Pavarotti appears perfectly willing to simply perform his music and provide no fuss in regards to how people in China are paid so little that 3 weeks of pay is barely enough to purchase a ticket to Pavarotti's show, a show they are required by their government under penalty to attend.
Even a performance of the supposedly subversive bohemian play La Boheme is but a toothless ode to young romance once the Chinese censors get involved. I’m assuming the censors got involved, it’s clear that Pavarotti’s performance of La Boheme is not intended to have any edge to it, none of the passionate rhetoric of La Boheme is heard during the performance. At the heart of Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China is that disconnect between Pavarotti the artist and Pavarotti the man.
Is Pavarotti a gutless, heartless, mercenary out for a buck regardless of morality or is he genuinely so naïve to the human rights situation in China that the suffering never registers with him? Distant Harmonies is not a movie intended to grapple with that idea and yet, it unintentionally begs that question and almost forces anyone with a brain to question Pavarotti's motives. The documentary just wants to be a Pavarotti travelogue in China but it take a significant amount of delusion to believe that that was actually possible.
