A celebrated baritone walks away from the stage at the height of his powers, retreats to a country estate, and pours everything he has left into two voices that are not his own.

THE MUSIC TEACHER (1988), known in its original French as Le maître de musique, stars José van Dam as Joachim Dallayrac, a renowned opera singer who abandons performing to teach. He takes on two young students, Sophie, played by Anne Roussel, and Jean, played by Philippe Volter, and drives them through a punishing course of lessons meant to prepare them for a singing competition, while his old rival Scotti backs a protégé of his own.

The training changes all three of them. Sophie and Jean fall for each other, while Dallayrac’s devotion to them is paternal and exacting, complicating the discipline he demands.

Gérard Corbiau directed the film. José van Dam, an acclaimed Belgian bass-baritone, sang his own music, and the students’ singing was dubbed by professional vocalists. The film moves at the pace of its arias, treating the long work of training a voice as seriously as any love story it tells alongside it.