Survey - The Unbelievable Glory of the Human Voice

Television (Full Length) – 1972

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Opening with an image of Orpheus floating on the water, this inspired doco climaxes with a contender for NZ's most eyeopening montage yet. Loaded with examples of the infinite ways the human voice can make music, the film sees host Julian Waring introducing choirs, opera, balladeers and protest singers. Along the way Michael Heath recreates a performance by Florence Foster Jenkins, a worryingly close cousin of Asian-New Zealand songbird Wing. The mash-up finale uses 2000 photographs to summarise two decades of music, in a scene that must have blown minds in the suburbs.

Opera nearly always deals with primitive passions - revenge, jealousy, murder, rampaging sexuality, lust. In fact someone once said that if a martian were to land on earth he’d get a better idea of human conduct through visiting the Italian opera than from almost anything else.
– Julian Waring