Sylabus
Week 1 – Oct. 4
Introduction, Course Overview
Week 2 – Oct. 11
Opera and Early Film
Why was early cinema attracted to opera? How did the “soundless opera” work? How did opera on screen transition from the silent to the sound era? What does early cinema share with late cinema in relation to opera?
Required reading: Rose Theresa. “From Méphistophélès to Méliès: Spectacle and Narrative in Opera and Early Film.” In Between Opera and Cinema, Ed. Jeongwon Joe and Rose Theresa. New York and London: Routledge 2002, 1-18.
Week 3 – Oct. 18
An (In)famous Encounter – Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera (1935)
Required reading: Michal Grover-Friedlander. “Brothers at the Opera.” Vocal Apparitions: The Attraction of Cinema to Opera. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2005, 33-50.
Week 4 – Oct. 25
Opera in Film – Why Does Hollywood Like Opera?
Case study: Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (1993).
Required reading: Marc A. Weiner. “Why Does Hollywood Like Opera?” In Between Opera and Cinema, Eds. Jeongwon Joe and Rose Theresa. New York and London: Routledge 2002, 75-91.
Week 5 – Nov. 1
Diva on Screen
Case studies: Geraldine Farrar as Carmen; excerpts from Jean-Jacques Beineix’ Diva (1981).
Required reading: Melina Esse. “The Silent Diva: Farrar’s Carmen.” In Technology and the Diva: Sopranos, Opera, and Media from Romanticism to the Digital Age. Ed. Karen Henson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016, 89-103.
Week 6 – Nov. 8
Fragmenting Opera – Aria (1987)
Required reading: Marcia J. Citron. “Opera as Fragment. ‘Liebestod’ and ‘Nessun dorma’ in Aria.” In When Opera Meets Film. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2010, 58-93.
Week 7 – Nov. 15
Opera on Film – Losey’s Don Giovanni (1979)
Screening of selected scenes from Losey’s Don Giovanni.
Week 8 – Nov. 22
Mozart on Screen
Required reading: Marcia J. Citron. “Opera al fresco: Rosi’s Bizet’s Carmen and Losey’s Don Giovanni.” Opera on Screen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2000, 161-204 – sections pertaining to Don Giovanni
Week 9 – Nov. 29
Filming Carmen
Screening of selected scenes from Francesco Rosi’s Bizet’s Carmen (1983).
Week 10 – Dec. 6
Filming Carmen – Continued
Required readings:
Marcia J. Citron. “Opera al fresco: Rosi’s Bizet’s Carmen and Losey’s Don Giovanni.” Opera on Screen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2000, 161-204 – sections pertaining to Carmen
H. Marshall Leicester, Jr. “Discourse and the Film Text: Four Readings of ‘Carmen.’” Cambridge Opera Journal 6/3 (1994): 245-282 – introduction and the section on Rosi’s Bizet’s Carmen
Week 11 – Dec. 13
Carmen Adaptations
Case studies: Hammerstein and Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954), Carlos Saura’s Carmen (1983).
Required readings:
Susan McClary. “Carmen on Film.” Cambridge Opera Handbooks: Georg Bizet Carmen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992, 130-146.
H. Marshall Leicester, Jr. “Discourse and the Film Text: Four Readings of ‘Carmen.’” Cambridge Opera Journal 6/3 (1994): 245-282 – the section on Saura’s Carmen.
Week 12 – Dec. 20
Opera and the Media
Case study: La Traviata im Hauptbahnhof (Schweizer Fernsehen 2008)
Required reading: Christopher Morris. “Digital Diva: Opera on Video.” The Opera Quarterly 26 (2010): 96-119.
Week 13 – Jan. 3
Presentations
Students prepare 15 min. presentations of their paper topics, based on a selected case study and relevant literature. A PowerPoint presentation is expected.
Final paper due by January 31
Anotace
The encounters of opera and cinema date back to the latter’s inception. Opera served as a source of gripping stories for silent movies, and it was not only revered but also ridiculed by the new medium, as in Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera (1935).
Canonic works of opera (Bizet’s Carmen, Mozart’s The Magic Flute) were successfully adapted for the screen by iconic directors such as Franco Zeffirelli and Ingmar Bergman, and later Kenneth Branagh and Peter Sellars. Moreover, opera left its mark on both the Hollywood blockbuster production (think Pretty Woman, for example) and European art cinema.
Last but not least, television opera was developed as a new intermedial genre devised specifically for the small screen. In recent years, increasing scholarly attention has been paid to these developments, with several book-length studies devoted to opera on screen.
The present course draws on this scholarship to explore some of the best-known examples of the diverse encounters of opera, cinema and television. The course is designed to provide students with audio-visual experience of selected case studies and the theoretical and analytical tools to approach them.