Opening Night at the Roxy: Sound Ideologies Between Opera House and Picture Palace in 1927

Gavin Williams, Harvard University

The opening night of the Roxy Picture Palace in New York was an event much-anticipated and discussed in the press of the time: the constellation of politicians, star performers and the general public in this enormous and ornate theatre was the cause for celebration, as was the new Vitaphone sound synchronization technology, which projected three short operatic selections on screen, interspersed by shows on stage. By reviewing the structure of the night's entertainments, examining reviews and analyzing film clips, I attempt to reconstruct a lost program of performance and ask how a new technology was staged. I reconsider the common historiographical trope that opera helped legitimate sound synchronization, for the politics of opera in 1920s New York were socially complex, fraught with issues of exhibition space, class and national identity. These ideologies were mediated through the Vitaphone technology itself, as device present in theatre, as projection of the singer's gestures on screen and voice through speakers. Drawing on theories of voice and sound proposed by Michel Chion, Mladen Dolar and James Lastra, I consider how an emergent and historically ephemeral sound film ideology came into being.