|
|
|
Screenplay Excerpts from High
Notes Tyler Craft Cormney Author’s Note: Tony Pagliacci, a rootless countertenor, might
seem an unlikely hero. In the original comedy High Notes, this struggling
American opera singer travels to Italy to reconnect with his roots and to find
the poetry that is missing in his day-to-day life. In
the opening scene, we find our nostalgic icon in the throes of a passionate
daydream. Throughout the film, we travel between dream and reality, past and
present; sometimes it is difficult to tell which is which: The score for the aria “Vesti La Giubba”
from Leoncavallo’s opera I PAGLIACCI begins over BLACK. FADE IN: INT. LA SCALA OPERA HOUSE - MILAN, ITALY - NIGHT We travel through the auditorium of the most famous opera house in
all the world: ornate white ceilings, sculptures, the plaster masks of Comedy
and Tragedy. THE AUDITORIUM is filled to capacity with finely dressed ITALIAN PATRONS, their
faces eager with anticipation. CENTER STAGE A light comes up on the clown, PAGLIACCIO, separating him from
matted darkness. He looks up. His eyes sparkle with tears as he begins Canio’s
famous lament, “Vesti la Giubba” -- PAGLIACCIO (THE
CLOWN) “Recitar! Mentre presso dal delirio...” The singer has an unusually high tenor voice. Technically, he’s a
countertenor, and the Aria was composed for a standard tenor, so we are
witnessing a singular performance. PAGLIACCIO’S song continues to the final
stanza: PAGLIACCIO (THE
CLOWN) “...Tramuta
in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto; in una smorfia il singhiozzo e’l dolor. Oh
ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore in franto!” Tears stream down his cheeks. He drops to one knee and opens his
arms to the heavens: PAGLIACCIO
(cont’d) (singing the
finale) “Ridi del duol t’avvelena il cor!” Pagliaccio bows his head. We hear the THUNDERING APPLAUSE of the opera house. Suddenly, and all at once, the round of applause ends. Silence. The Clown looks up. In a flash, his fantasy world disintegrates: We hear the clink of silverware, muffled chatter, bawdy laughter. THE CLOWN’S POV - LA SCALA OPERA HOUSE is now a dingy dinner theater. The enthralled OPERA FANS have been
replaced by indifferent DINERS, stuffing their faces, slurping their wine,
cracking their ribald jokes. COSTUMED WAITERS weave among the tables pouring cheap chianti: AN
ENGLISH DANDY, A VIKING PRINCESS, A GYPSY GIRL CHOMPING A CIGAR. THE CLOWN looks down at his own costume. It is now an ill-fitting
moth-eaten, button-missing replica of the ornate costume from his fantasy. The
sadness in the Clown’s eyes is heartbreaking, but this is no longer an act.
His head hangs low as he starts off stage. Then -- A well-dressed ITALIAN GENTLEMAN at a table near the stage begins
to clap for him. He’s the only one. In fact, he stands up from his table while
applauding. The Clown pauses and smiles, tipping his bowler hat. The Curtain falls. Its surface proudly proclaiming: “LA SCALA RISTORANTE, NEW YORK INT. THE WINGS - SAME A step off stage, the Clown’s smile vanishes and his shoulders
slump. He passes the next dreamer waiting for her cue, a rotund VIKING PRINCESS.
To her he doesn’t exist -- there are no Italian clowns in her opera. When he learns that his biological mother is
dying, Tony travels to the fictional city of Santa Cecilia, Italy, to say
farewell. This will be their first meeting since she gave him up for adoption
twenty years ago. He has so many questions, but she is too weak to speak
anything more than the name she gave him. For now, his questions must remain
unanswered. Like a detective, Tony searches Santa Cecilia
for clues that will give him some indication of who his mother was, and,
perhaps, who he is in the process. Leonardo Mazza, who becomes Tony’s guide
and confidant, tells him that “the very soul of Santa Cecilia is music...
At least it used to be.” The city of Santa Cecilia is tottering on the
brink of the twenty-first century. The standards of its golden era are rapidly
disappearing. As another character puts it, “It used to be in Italy there were
two powers you did not cross—God and Opera.”
But times have apparently changed: Santa Cecilia’s Opera House has been
condemned and is scheduled to be demolished. In Violetta’s words from the
opera La Traviata, it is time to say “addio, del passato bei sogni ridenti”---—“farewell
past, happy dreams of days gone by.” Tony learns that his mother was once an opera
singer, who couldn’t make ends meet. Even after giving him up for adoption,
she was forced to leave the stage to earn a living wage. Through determination,
she built a costume shop that served the local opera house. If she couldn’t be
on the stage, at least her beautiful creations would be. Now, with the opera
house closed, her legacy is in jeopardy. Tony visits the costume shop, which was left
to him in his mother’s will. Inside he meets ghosts of the past, clowns of the
present, and a vision of the future: INT. COSTUME SHOP - NIGHT Tony enters. The shop is dimly lit and deserted. THE COSTUMES look like a royal court of headless ghosts. MUSIC is playing softly from the back of the shop. Tony listens at the door of his mother’s office. The music is
coming from inside. He opens the door. INT. THE OFFICE - SAME The song is “Un Aura Amorosa” from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. When Tony enters, he sees -- A MAN’S ARMS hugging the waist of a DRESS DUMMY. TONY Excuse me. Rodolfo, the street singer, releases the dress dummy and jumps
back. RODOLFO (blushing) Mi scusi! Mi scusi! TONY What are you doing? Rodolfo, tipping his top hat repeatedly -- RODOLFO Buona notte! Buona notte! Quack quack! He runs out past Tony. Tony shakes his head. He stops the record
player. The music stops. DISSOLVE TO: INT. THE OFFICE - A FEW MINUTES LATER A lonely cot in the corner and a rack of women’s clothes. BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS of his mother with various opera stars on the wall. Tony pulls a framed photo from the wall. THE PHOTO is of his mother, twenty years ago. She’s standing next to a
young LUIGI CANTINORI in his Pagliacci costume. TONY (V.O.) Cantinori... CUT TO: A BABY ALBUM Pictures of Tony as an infant. He stops on -- A PHOTOGRAPH Tony, age three, facing his mother, who is the same age as she was
in the photo with Cantinori. She’s dressed in the white gown she was wearing
in Tony’s nightmare on the plane. Her hands cup his tiny face. Tony touches his tingling cheeks as if remembering. BABY ALBUM After this page, the rest are blank. Tony opens the blinds of a window facing the shop floor. THE SHOP FLOOR The costumes look so empty without bodies inside them. Tony’s eyes reveal the loneliness in his heart. He turns away
from the window and notices something that he wasn’t conscious of before -- THE DRESS DUMMY that Rodolfo was hugging is draped in a WHITE GYPSY GOWN, the same
dress seen in the album photo and in Tony’s nightmare. Tony closes the office blinds. ANOTHER ANGLE - THE RECORD PLAYER Tony lowers the needle. The music begins again, “Un Aura Amorosa.” ANOTHER ANGLE - TONY AND THE DRESS DUMMY He carefully wraps his arms around the dress dummy and sways gently
with the music. Moments later, a woman’s voice interrupts him: WOMAN’S VOICE (O.S.) Mi scusi. Tony, still holding the dress dummy, spins around, half-expecting
to see his mother’s ghost. ANGELINA BIRENZE is about his age. Her devastating beauty is accentuated by the
vulnerability of a lost child. ANGELINA (in Italian,
subtitled) <Is the Signorina in?> Tony steps around the dress dummy. TONY She’s...No.
Can I help you? ANGELINA Mi dispiace. English. Am I late? Her English is very good. TONY For what? ANGELINA My lesson. TONY Sorry...? Pause. ANGELINA Just tell her that I stopped by. She starts to go. TONY What’s your name? ANGELINA (laughing
nervously) Oh. Angelina Birenze. Angelina turns, intent on leaving. TONY Signorina Birenze, wait. Angelina turns back to face him. TONY (cont’d) I’m sorry to be the one to tell you...Signorina
Cassini has passed away. Angelina clutches her heart. ANGELINA Oh...Oh
no! TONY You...studied
with her? ANGELINA Not...no.
I met her on a train at the beginning of the summer. I’ve been away. I’ve
just -- she told me to come when I -- Ah Dio. Poor woman. She crosses herself. TONY She was my mother. Angelina bursts into tears. ANGELINA I feel...I
-- dispiace. Angelina runs out of the office. Tony chases after her -- TONY Signorina! Tony embarks on a quest through the past for
beauty. He finds it represented in the condemned Opera House, in the costume
shop that his mother built with her own hands, and in the person of Angelina
Birenze, a vulnerable, young Italian woman who is searching for her own share of
beauty and independence. High Notes is a film about searching our past for
answers. Tony falls in love with Angelina, but she is
engaged to Enzo Stavione, the most powerful man in Santa Cecilia. Enzo also
happens to be the real estate developer responsible for closing the opera house
and trying to put Tony’s mother’s costume shop out of business. When Tony
stands up to Enzo, his life is endangered. In order to stay in Santa Cecilia, he
must disguise himself as a female singing tutor named Mona Lisa. EXT. UNIVERSITY CAMPUS - SANTA CECILIA - DAY The love duet from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly -- “Vogliatemi bene” -- plays over. Mona Lisa makes her debut on campus. It’s a magical day when
anything seems possible -- A violet sky, majestic poplar trees, a monarch butterfly. Mona Lisa’s long, yellow scarf flutters in the wind. “She” sees a group of six YOUNG WOMEN sitting on a picnic
blanket having tea. THE TEA PARTY In Tony’s mind’s eye, the tea party becomes a Picasso painting
-- a cubist tea party: glimpses of pastel colored sundresses. A tea cup of bone
china. A woman’s eye. A steaming tea pot. Pink lips. Sun reflected off long
hair. A delicate hand. A plate of sweets. The silhouette of a woman’s neck and
shoulder. Then in the next moment, disparate images combine into a unity of
beauty -- Angelina Birenze. Angelina notices Mona Lisa staring at her. She stands up from the
tea party and crosses to her. Mona Lisa smiles at Angelina, and Angelina returns the smile. Tony eventually learns that he must drop his
mask if he is ever going to find true love. When Angelina learns that she has
been deceived, she is understandably furious. Nevertheless, she recognizes that
his motives were pure. In true operatic fashion, she lets him know that he is
forgiven by singing a love duet that he composed for her. The aria is written
with male and female parts interchanging but never overlapping—that
is, until the end. High Notes ends like the aria, in harmony: EXT. THE PARK - DUSK A light snow is falling. A haggard, bearded, half-dead Tony Pagliacci sings for loose change
and huddles for body warmth. On the wind, Tony thinks he hears a -- WOMAN SINGING. He’s delirious -- It may be his imagination. TONY Papa did you hear...Papa? Tony looks around, but he’s alone. He hears the song again and stumbles in the direction of the
woman’s voice. EXT. STREETS OF SANTA CECILIA - SAME He searches the winding streets. Suddenly, he’s aware that this
is the female part of Angelina’s aria. Tony struggles to sing the reply but can’t; his voice has
deserted him. The Woman’s voice leads him to -- INT. THE OPERA HOUSE - SAME A light comes up on stage and we see a WOMAN’S SILHOUETTE behind
the scrim. Tony, exhausted and dressed in rags, climbs onto the stage and
stands on the other side of the scrim. He touches the silhouette lightly with his hand, certain it must be
a mirage. The woman sings softly. Tony falls to his knees, removes his hat, and holds it out to her.
Angelina’s singing the final stanza of the aria he wrote for her -- THE
HARMONY. LEO, ESTELLA, RODOLFO, AND OTHERS slip into the House quietly, unnoticed by Tony. TONY unties the moth-eaten scarf wrapped around his throat. With all he has left, he attempts to join her song. HIS VOICE is brittle at first but slowly regains its former power. THE SCRIM rises revealing -- ANGELINA breathtaking in Tony’s mother’s white gypsy gown, the one that
Rodolfo rescued from the fire. HIS TIRED EYES ignite with a new spark. Tony moves closer to her. She takes his
free hand -- Their voices soar together. The song concludes. Angelina holds his face in her hands, the same way that Tony’s
mother did in the old photograph. APPLAUSE rises from the House. Angelina looks into the audience and sees -- HER FATHER shaking his fist above his head in emphatic celebration. Angelina takes a bow. LEO AND ESTELLA smile at one another. Estella takes Leo’s hand. RODOLFO smiles as tears fall from his eyes. TONY AND ANGELINA bow, hand-in-hand. TONY takes a bow. He motions to Angelina. She takes a bow. Tony takes a final bow worthy of Chaplin’s Little Tramp. After a beat, he wipes away a single tear from his cheek -- TONY (singing) “La commedia e finita!” The scrim falls in front of Tony and Angelina. We see their
silhouettes come together in a kiss, and we -- FADE TO BLACK. THE END. Like Tony Pagliacci, we may learn that the beauty we are looking for is not behind us but inside us. We may discover that in order to possess this beauty we must reinvent ourselves, take chances, and break all the rules.
|