| Content | Václav Kašlík from the National Theatre in Prague contacts Charlotta Martinů about a television co-production which aims to create a film version of JULIETTA in French, German and Czech. The co-producers will be France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia.
However, they were puzzled by Charlotte's request that French television not broadcast the film until five years after the opera's stage production in a French theatre. This condition would have made filming impossible, would have been financially disadvantageous for ChM, and would have prevented the promotion of the work in Europe. Bohuslav Martinů's stage works in particular have not received the attention they deserve, and outside Czechoslovakia they have received a lukewarm critical reception (as most recently in Vienna). It was not easy for the writer or for Ivo Vyhnálek, head of the Czechoslovak Television's music department, to get foreign editors to film.
The work would become famous throughout Europe and only then would other foreign theatres become interested in it. The writer illustrates this with Janáček's The Makropulos Affair, which he recently filmed. After it was broadcast in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, interest in it increased abroad.
A maximum of five performances can be counted on in Lyon or on another French stage. This will not bring the financial gain or the publicity that a television broadcast would bring.
The writer asks Charlotte to reconsider the matter and possibly give her consent to the creation of a film version of JULIETTA in French, German and Czech in 1968. The earliest a television broadcast would take place would be 1969.
|