When Opera Meets Film

Drawing on cinematic traditions of Hollywood, France, and Britain, this book investigates the relationship between opera and film.

Marcia J. Citron (Author)

9780521895750, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 May 2010

344 pages, 49 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.9 x 2.1 cm, 0.68 kg

'Citron provides a fascinating, detailed study of the interrelationship between opera and film across several specific films and a number of the opera/films of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle … This book will make readers want to view the films in question to consider the issues Citron explores and the subjective interpretations she employs. Even those who do not agree with her will find that they will never again view the films in the same way.' Choice

Opera can reveal something fundamental about a film, and film can do the same for an opera, argues Marcia J. Citron. Structured by the categories of Style, Subjectivity, and Desire, this volume advances our understanding of the aesthetics of the opera/film encounter. Case studies of a diverse array of important repertoire including mainstream film, opera-film, and postmodernist pastiche are presented. Citron uses Werner Wolf's theory of intermediality to probe the roles of opera and film when they combine. The book also refines and expands film-music functions, and details the impact of an opera's musical style on the meaning of a film. Drawing on cinematic traditions of Hollywood, France, and Britain, the study explores Coppola's Godfather trilogy, Jewison's Moonstruck, Nichols's Closer, Chabrol's La Cérémonie, Schlesinger's Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Boyd's Aria, and Ponnelle's opera-films.

Introduction
Part I. Style: 1. Operatic style in Coppola's Godfather trilogy
2. Opera as fragment: 'Liebestod' and 'Nessun dorma' in Aria
Part II. Subjectivity: 3. Subjectivity in the opera-films of Jean-Pierre Ponelle
4. Don Giovanni and subjectivity in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie
Part III. Desire: 5. 'An honest contrivance': opera and desire in Moonstruck
6. The sound of desire: Così's 'Soave sia il vento' in Sunday, Bloody Sunday and Closer
Epilogue
Bibliography
Filmography and videography.

Subject Areas: Opera [AVGC9], Film theory & criticism [APFA]