How hip-hop conquers the temples of classical music
Josephine (Marie Oppert) and Antoine (Mohamed Belkhir/MB14) in „Tenor“
Those: STUDIOCANAL STUDIOCANAL
What is a young hip hopper from the banlieues doing in the Paris Opera? Light the culture temple? Not even close. Sometimes a completely different career begins with a visit to the music theater. In the feel-good film “Tenor” by Claude Zidi jr. for example. Sounds good, looks good, but something is missing.
Vfrom rags to riches. The simple but always compelling story is almost as old as cinema. In the early 1950s, it was transformed for the up-and-coming tenor Mario Lanza into: young man of the people makes an operatic career with the help of his voice.
Ready were corny musical films like “A Kiss After Midnight” (1949), where Lanza quickly takes off as a truck driver, and of course the “Great Caruso” (1951), where it goes from humble Neapolitan origins to the opera houses of the world. A career that Lanza himself was ultimately denied. But even today, tenors like the Maltese Joseph Calleja still claim the old disgraceful rag as the initial spark for their careers.
Now following in his father’s footsteps, French entertainment film director Claude Zidi jr. the old recipe for success modified again. The result: “Tenor”.
But it’s also too touching: The velvet-eyed, actually quite well-behaved rapper Antoine comes from the banlieue infested with migrants with his sushi delivery bag to the heart of Paris – to the Opéra. There is a little battle there, you let him feel his outsider role immediately.
Antoine gets excited, raises his voice, also warbles a few derogatory opera notes – and the feared, because strict singing teacher Madame Loyseau (Michèle Laroque) becomes aware of the beautiful boy with the golden vocal cords.
The rest unwinds routinely, but professionally staged and always heartily to look at in the proven RomCom manner. “Suddenly a song princess”, that’s what the irresistibly tear-inducing tearjerker could also be called.
Nobody dwells on reality
Because it is not only by chance that the self-playing French superstar tenor Roberto Alagna is on the rehearsal stage in this proudly closed environment. In addition, Zidi shamelessly uses the entire magic of overpowering the Paris Opéra Garnier, which has been tried and tested for almost 150 years, in brisk 360-degree pans.
In this modern fairy tale with song, no one dwells on reality, and no conflict really needs to be resolved. They are all just nice milieu vignettes that are lovingly dabbed on and visualized in a cinematic virtuoso manner.
The big brother (Guillaume Duhesme), a very dear heavy boy, continues to fight his illegal boxing matches and lies to the mum, who is in Tunisia via Facetime. The friend Joséphine (Marie Oppert) from the singing class, who happens to have a private theater in her home castle, falls in love as quickly as she falls in love, the enemy Maxime (Louis de Lavignère) becomes a friend.
Antoine’s gang, who at first laugh about his opera madness and behave rather brawny, of course arrive in time for the all-important audition. And because the singing madame, who lives picturesquely above the Café de la Paix with a view of the opera and, according to the opera libretto, is terminally ill, who sacrificed her life to the institution and believes in her protégé as a pretty best friend to the last drop of blood on the sheet music, he sings herself with Puccini’s “Nessun dorma “ into opera happiness.
It ends triumphantly with “Vincerò” on the high B flat, leaving the rest open. This is how hip-hop becomes capable of electronic music, no one disses, everything flows, the seemingly diverse worlds become one, at least in terms of sound. Because of course at some point the stiff vocal lady also rocks her hips to Tupac beats.
Mohammed Belkhir, the cuddly, opera voice doubled main actor, who has been known in France as a rapper under the name MB14 through the casting show “The Voice” since 2016, makes all petrified hearts melt. And “Tenor – one voice, two worlds” tells more than 100 minutes of just one – that of the reality-detached feel-good film.