Film documents an opera’s revival

Once popular, and a particular favorite of tenor Enrico Caruso, Jacques Fromental Halevy’s 1835 opera “La Juive” (The Jewess) vanished from the repertory in the mid-1930s. One reason was that the Nazis banned it outright. But the work’s great length -- some five hours -- and elaborate production values and style also began to seem old-fashioned to opera-goers in this country.

Recently, however, the work has undergone a surprisingly successful revival that owes much to the efforts of Brooklyn-born tenor Neil Shicoff, who sang the central role of Eleazar at Vienna State Opera in 1999 and at Metropolitan Opera in New York in November. He will reprise the role at Paris Opera in 2007.

Now, the story of Shicoff’s efforts is the subject of a documentary film, “Finding Eleazar,” directed by Paul Heil Fisher and scheduled to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York three times in May as part of the festival’s first documentary director competition.

The film includes a music video segment, directed by Sidney Lumet, of Shicoff singing Eleazar’s famous aria, “Rachel, quand du Seigneur” (Rachel, when the Lord’s saving grace) in which Eleazar struggles between the idealism of his Jewish faith and hatred of his Christian enemies.

There are no immediate plans to bring the film to Los Angeles, but its makers hope to snag a distributor as a result of the New York screenings.

-- C.P.