Cinema's illusions, opera's allure : the operatic impulse in film / David Schroeder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schroeder, David P., 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures and opera.

Opera in motion pictures.

Operas--Film adaptations.

Operas.

Genre:

Film adaptations.

Physical Description:

xii, 372 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Continuum, 2002.

Summary:

From Richard Wegner and George Lucas to Alfred Hitchcock and Maria Callas, Schroeder provides a fascinating account of the entire absorbing history of the interdependence of opera and film, demonstrating how opera can be found lurking in the background of a wide range of films. The allure of opera to cinema early in the century held up through the silent era, into sound films, through the golden age of movies, and into the most recent approaches to moviemaking. "Cinema's Illusions, Opera's Allure explores the numerous ways--some predictable, some unexpected, and some bizarre--that this has happened.

Contents:

Part 1 Appropriation of Opera in Early Cinema

1. Silent opera: DeMille's Carmen 13

2. D. W. Griffith as a Wagnerian 25

3. Stage fright: Phantom of the Opera 37

4. A life at the opera 48

5. Synesthesia: Alexander Nevsky as opera 57

Part 2 The Film Score

6. The leitmotif 73

7. Titles music as operatic overture 85

Part 3 Cinema Gives Opera the Finger

8. Casting opera in our teeth: Chaplin's Carmen 99

9. Attack of the anarchists: A Night at the Opera 107

10. Deflated and flat: opera in Citizen Kane 116

11. Bursting out into opera: Fellini's E la nave va 127

12. The charming opera snob in Hannah and Her Sisters 140

Part 4 Wagner's Bastards

13. Misreading Wagner: the politics of Lang's Siegfried 151

14. Cinema as grand opera: politics, religion and DeMille 168

15. Bombarding the senses: Apocalypse Now 188

16. Wagnerian images of sound and sensuality 197

17. Wagner's Ring cycle for adolescents: Star Wars 213

18. What's opera, Doc? 223

Part 5 Cinema as Opera

19. Dizzying illusion: Vertigo 231

20. Carmen copies 247

21. Operastruck 264

22. Outing opera in Philadelphia 274

23. Opera obsession 284

24. Surrogate voice: Maria Callas as Medea 296

25. Orpheus reincarnated 307

Part 6 Opera Returns as Cinema

26. Finale: directors' operas 321.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-355) and index.

ISBN:

0826413927

OCLC:

48876478