
Vocal Apparitions
The Attraction of Cinema to Opera
Michal Grover-Friedlander(Author)
Princeton University Press
Published on 27. February 2005
Book
Hardback
216 pages
978-0-691-12008-9 (ISBN)
Description
Cinema and opera have become intertwined in a variety of powerful and unusual ways. Vocal Apparitions tells the story of this fascinating intersection, interprets how it occurred, and explores what happens when opera is projected onto the medium of film. Michal Grover-Friedlander finds striking affinities between film and opera--from Lon Chaney's classic silent film, The Phantom of the Opera, to the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera to Fellini's E la nave va. One of the guiding questions of this book is what occurs when what is aesthetically essential about one medium is transposed into the aesthetic field of the other. For example, Grover-Friedlander's comparison of an opera by Poulenc and a Rossellini film, both based on Cocteau's play The Human Voice, shows the relation of the vocal and the visual to be surprisingly affected by the choice of the medium. Her analysis of the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera demonstrates how, as a response to opera's infatuation with death, cinema comically acts out a correction of opera's fate.
Grover-Friedlander argues that filmed operas such as Zeffirelli's Otello and Friedrich's Falstaff show the impossibility of a direct transformation of the operatic into the cinematic. Paradoxically, cinema at times can be more operatic than opera itself, thus capturing something essential that escapes opera's self-understanding. A remarkable look at how cinema has been haunted--and transformed--by opera, Vocal Apparitions reveals something original and important about each medium.
Grover-Friedlander argues that filmed operas such as Zeffirelli's Otello and Friedrich's Falstaff show the impossibility of a direct transformation of the operatic into the cinematic. Paradoxically, cinema at times can be more operatic than opera itself, thus capturing something essential that escapes opera's self-understanding. A remarkable look at how cinema has been haunted--and transformed--by opera, Vocal Apparitions reveals something original and important about each medium.
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One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2005More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
10 line illus. 24 halftones.
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
525 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-12008-9 (9780691120089)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2015
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
€148.95
Available for download
Person
Michal Grover-Friedlander teaches in the Musicology Department and the Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts at Tel Aviv University.
Content
*Frontmatter, pg. i*Contents, pg. vii*List of Illustrations, pg. ix*Acknowledgments, pg. xi*Introduction, pg. 1*CHAPTER 1. The Phantom of the Opera: The Lost Voice of Opera in Silent Film, pg. 19*CHAPTER 2. Brothers at the Opera, pg. 33*CHAPTER 3. Otello's One Voice, pg. 53*CHAPTER 4. Falstaff 's Free Voice, pg. 81*CHAPTER 5. Opera on the Phone: The Call of the Human Voice, pg. 113*CHAPTER 6. Fellini's Ashes, pg. 131*NOTES, pg. 153*INDEX, pg. 183