Production: ItalArk
Executive Producer: Michael Spyres
Written, Filmed and Directed by: Edoardo Zucchetti
With: Michael Spyres
Featuring: Terry Gilliam, Roberto Alagna, Joyce DiDonato, Damiano Micheletto, J. Roddy Walston, Thaddeus Strassberger, Corinne Winters, Lawrence Brownlee, Benedetto Sicca, Leah Hausman, Sean Spyres, Erica Spyres and many more.
Cinematography: Edoardo Zucchetti
Editing: Andrea Londretti

Trailer: Watch

New York, January 2020. Only a few days remain before the premiere of La Damnation de Faust at the Metropolitan Opera, the ultimate stage for any opera singer. Life seems perfect: a home in Manhattan, rehearsals, friends, photo shoots, museums, and walks through a snow-covered Central Park. Michael flies to Houston to replace a colleague, sings the performance, returns… and suddenly loses his voice. His Metropolitan Opera debut is in jeopardy. “This is the crazy life of an opera singer,” he tells me. We can only hope that an aerosol treatment will work a miracle.

A leap back in time takes us to London in 2014, where Terry Gilliam is directing Benvenuto Cellini for the English National Opera. From there begins a ten-year journey through music, theatre and life: Bad Wildbad, Amsterdam, Florence, Versailles, the United States, Pesaro, and the great stages of Salzburg, Paris, Vienna, Aix-en-Provence, Manchester, Berlin and Martina Franca. Along the way Michael becomes a father, his international career continues to soar, and the film gradually becomes the portrait of a man who has turned his work into his life – and his life into his work.

The journey ends where it all began: in London, at Terry Gilliam’s home, before returning one final time to New York to discover whether that aerosol really did save Michael Spyres’ voice for his Metropolitan Opera debut.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

I started filming artists and backstage life while I was still at university. It has always come naturally to me—like buying a newspaper or dreaming. So when Michael Spyres asked me to follow him across Europe and the United States to document his life, I immediately knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Since that afternoon in May 2014, we have travelled together by train, plane, car, motorcycle and even tractor. Given complete creative freedom, I found myself filming in the most unlikely places: in front of an aerosol machine, on a baseball field, in the sewers of Manchester, inside Marie Antoinette’s Versailles, on the Brooklyn Bridge, through the canals of Amsterdam and in the tailoring workshops of the Rossini Opera Festival.

This film tells the story of a man, a singer, a father and an artist who has made his work his life and his life his work.

Spoiler alert: it ends with Terry Gilliam, in his own home, with a shot that I still consider a small miracle to have captured.