Not Just Another Pretty Face

'NAPOLEON IS one of the few men I admire. He had tremendous faith in himself. He was a man driven by his sense of mission, like Christopher Columbus. Or like Christ. I think that Napoleon felt he had a gigantic purpose in life. He wasn't, as some people say, just another dictator like Hitler, but something more."

In his mid-70s, Carmine Coppola sees himself as something more than just another composer of film music. Collaborating with his son Francis Ford, the senior Coppola has written music for The Black Stallion, The Godfather, parts I and II, and Apocalypse Now. Now travelling across the United States with Napoleon, he conducts symphony orchestras through the score he wrote for the film. But while he shares his son's interest in film, Carmine Coppola says his compositions fall into two distinct categories: programmatic music composed in conjunction with other media, and pure music of a more personal nature.

When Francis Ford showed him Napoleon, Carmine Coppola saw a chance to indulge in the former on a grand scale. "My son has always liked the idea of a silent film accompanied by live music. I think he has wanted to do one like that for a long time himself. To me, there is nothing like the excitement and unique experience of a live orchestra playing. After he saw Napoleon a few years ago, he came to me and said, 'I think this is it. Napoleon.'

"Of course, we could have taped the symphony playing. This is what they used to do in the early sound pictures. And we do have a tape for when the film goes on tour, for those places that have no orchestra pit. But I could think no better way to convey the excitement Gance himself brings to the audience than to have the musicians there, live."

"When I began working on the score," Coppola continues, "I have two ideas I tried to integrate. Abel Gance was concerned with presenting a man, not a documentary. He wanted to involve his audience. So while I knew that the music had to be contemporary, I decided to rely on the Revolutionary and Romantic music from Napoleon's France.

"I realized I was writing for an audience used to dialogue and lyrical music in their films. I knew I had to communicate something of that to them; I am surprised at how well it worked.

"I recently got a letter from a woman who'd seen it every single time it played in New York last year. She told me, 'Mr. Coppola, now when I go to Napoleon, I just sit and close my eyes. I listen to your music and it tells me what is happening in the film.'"

Coppola parallels Gance's thematic conception for the film with his liberal use of the Wagnerian leitmotif: themes suited to a particular idea and varied according to situation. This, he asserts, concurs with Gance's Wagnerian idea of three operas: Napoleon's rise during the French Revolution; the establishment of the Empire and his despotism; his downfall and death.

Carmine Coppola's background is exclusively music. He attended the Julliard School on a scholarship, and pursued his graduate studies at the Manhattan School, from which he graduated as a Master of Composition. Studying with Schillinger and Porthe, he sought to refine his craft. "I was looking for answers to what I was trying to do: establish a method and style that was mine."

Coppola began his career in New York. Getting married and starting a family in that same period, he tried to establish in his children the European traditions of culture and education. Soon after his marriage, the family moved to Detroit, where Coppola was first flutist in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. ("That's how Francis Ford was named, but that's a different story.") Then, back to New York, where Coppola worked under Toscannini.

"We're a very close-knit family. I don't think that the moving affected the kids that much. We were always in big cities, so that was a constant. But you know, I was a musician so that I could support my family; we had to move where there was work. That's part of show business, the moving. We're a show business family. There's my daughter, Talia Shire. And Francis. And my eldest son, who was a professor, is now writing novels. We're a family full of love."

Coppola seems uncomfortable talking about his family. He is a proud father, but he hesitates to talk about subjects of which he is unsure. He talks about music, and his first love, composing.

"My main object is to write, to keep learning. I always try to perfect my composition. But I do like writing film and opera music. I believe that it fulfills the needs of particular situations. My opera, Escorial, to a text by Michel de Gilderone, is a return to the Theater of the Absurd, popular in the '20s, but in a very contemporary style. In a sense, Napoleon is a film-opera. The San Fransisco Opera has even included it in the subscription part of its season.

"But what I like writing for myself is purely abstract music, pure, non-programmable music. I have written symphonic poems, and chamber music. It is my way of personal expression."

After Napoleon has finished its American tour, Coppola will be able to return to the projects he abandoned to conduct his score. He intends to write the score for Francis Ford's two upcoming movies, The Back Stallion II, and The Little Mermaids, which is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. "I read that story recently for the first time. I want to capture the dreamy quality of it in my music," he asserts. Also in the works is a second opera, but first he wants to see Escorial performed; Sarah Caldwell has already expressed interest.

"Most of all, I want to maintain the scope and difference of the two types of music I write."

Napoleon will be at Boston's Metropolitan Center from November 10 through 15.