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The Cultural Revolution (1966-76), which occurred 17 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, saw the production of the filmic Revolutionary Model Operas or RMOs, comprised of eight films within this period. The RMOs, which were actually operas filmed in 35mm, precluded all other film genres during the period. Political factors, issues, and developments in the Cultural Revolution, especially in the early 1960s, contributed to and inflected these films: they became the predominant popular cultural form through which the Cultural Revolution, as a set of discursive regimes, was articulated. Mao Zedong believed that the Chinese Communist Party was departing from orthodox Marxism and needed to move rapidly from socialism to Communism through a continuous and intensive "proletarianization" of the consciousness of the Chinese people. He felt that Chinese social institutions and fields had been infiltrated by bourgeois elements, and this had caused China to deviate from socialism and take a capitalist orientation. Consequently, the film medium, considered a powerful propaganda tool, took on the role of the main ideological apparatus of the Cultural Revolution. The prime mover in this use of film was Mao's wife Jiang Qing, who had been a film actress in Shanghai in the 1930s. She directly involved herself in the process of safeguarding the political stance of the film industry. Thus, in the Cultural Revolution, feature film production was suspended while only the so-called "eight RMOs" ("Ba da yangbanxi") were filmed. Owing to the official denunciation of Jiang in the post-Mao era, her role in the productions of the RMO films was often overlooked by existing research. This article gives a historical reassessment of Jiang's status and function by tracing her previous professional and political experiences in the circle of art and literature, and by exploring her dominant role in shaping the visuality of the RMO films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the CCP officially claimed that Chinese women achieved an equal position as men, and the Confucian patriarchal family was deconstructed. This article is an ongoing exploration of Maoist gender discourse by analysing the image of female warriors in the revolutionary opera film, The Red Detachment of Women (1972) which was made and popularised during the Cultural Revolution. This article finds that Maoist gender discourse failed to deconstruct the Confucian patriarchy. The image of female warriors in the revolutionary opera films was a reproduction of the patriarchal narrative of Hua Mulan, which served an ethical symbol of loyalty and filial daughter in the discourse of Confucian patriarchy. Similar to Mulan, the masculinised image of female warriors in the revolutionary opera films cannot be identified as a feminist representation yet a cultural and ethical symbol of filial daughter that leads to women's subordination to men's needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the experiential dimension of simulcasting investigating subjective engagement with opera cinema. Topics include the problem with existing audience research on simulcasting that is emphasis only on experienced attendees and focus mostly on aesthetic and commercial dimension of simulcasting, the theoretical scaffolding and methodology of the research done by the author, and presentation of data regarding sample of novice opera fans .

The article focuses on different aspects of opera cinema such as consideration of different strands in the wider ecology of "event cinema", the aesthetic experience of opera cinema, and concept of the paratext in opera studies. Topics include evolution of behind the scenes genre in cinema, accommodation of roaming audiences and intermissions by multiplex cinemas, and significance of paratext materials in opera cinema experience.

The article presents a relationship between opera and screen media focusing on aesthetic and political implications of technological reproduction, remediation of musical-theatrical works and challenges inherent in operatic stage productions. Topics include diversity of practices and objects in opera, significant changes in presenting opera, specificity of reenactments of Puccini's and Verdi's operas as compared to conventional opera films, and discussion of the project "Maria by Callas"

Tony Britten's filmFalstaff (2008) is an unusual, even radical opera-film. An updated treatment with a colloquial English translation and a chamber arrangement, and lacking many operatic elements, the film enacts a remediation of opera-film through the medium of television. Remediation, as conceived by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, refers to "the representation of one medium in another," and its goal "is to refashion or rehabilitate other media." Britten's Falstaff is strongly influenced by British popular television, especially British situation comedy. Sitcoms that emphasize working-class culture and "lads' humor"--such as Only Fools and Horses and Men Behaving Badly respectively--resonate conspicuously with this Falstaff. In addition, television features prominently in it by virtue of the fact that protagonist John Falstaff is a former television star. The implications of this remediated opera-film for Verdi and Boito's opera are also of considerable interest. In critical ways associated with music, text, and narrative, the opera is highly suited to Britten's conception. Building on the work of Denise Gallo, I propose that Britten's film marks another moment in the struggle for national ownership of the Merry Wives material. In this sense the film articulates an "Englishizing" of Verdi and Boito's opera. The new kind of opera-film represented by Britten's Falstaff reinforces the idea of "television opera" as a genre that takes advantage of television's medial and aesthetic capabilities, and expands its purview to adaptations as well as new operas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a recording of composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s aria “Vesti la giubba” from the opera “I Pagliacci,” which was performed and recorded using the sound film system Vitaphone. Topics discussed include inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen’s 1783 creation of a speaking machine, the history of sound cinema, and the making of a Vitaphone short film featuring tenor Giuseppe Martinelli performing “Vesti la giubba.”

The article critiques the filmed version of theatre director Peter Sellars’s 1996 staging of the oratorio “Theodora,” by composer George Frideric Handel with lyrics by librettist Thomas Morell. Particular focus is given to the performance of mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the role of Irene in the oratorio’s Act I aria “As with rosy steps the morn.” The film-making style of Sellars is analyzed, focusing on the use of close-up shots of Hunt Lieberson intercut with the other actors.

The close-up is a frequently employed film language in Cantonese opera film production and a keyword that has entered the debates on Chinese opera filmmaking. The close-up also plays a crucial role in the move from a stylized operatic mode of representation to a social realist mode in Cantonese cinema, in addition to performing the function of highlighting performance skills or the texture of a sentiment or an emotional trajectory. Here, through an analysis of the salience of the close-up in Cantonese opera films, and the relation between affect, folklore and Cantonese opera films, I argue that the preponderance of heightened emotion in Cantonese opera films, the perpetuation of the commonsensical view and philosophical conceptions in the approach to challenges and aggression, and the role of the close-up in the translation between stage and screen has given rise to an idiomatic Cantonese cinema in correspondence to the cultural context of Hong Kong and its Cantonese audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the re-emergence of a cinema of attraction in the last years of taiyupian, a Hoklo topolect cinema created in Taiwan. Why were these years the 'last', and who was watching? This article makes use of newspaper articles, advertisements, and the numbers, but focuses on questions of style. The 1969 film Zhang Di Seeks A-Zu, featuring pop singer Zhang Di and opera star Yang Lihua, well articulates the comedic and camp aesthetics of this period, as well as the renewed importance of opera culture across different media. These aesthetics gesture towards a particular audience and viewing culture, while offering alternative values to classical realist cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the narrative aspect of "Opera Jawa," an opera film directed by Gavin Nugroho. The analysis of the film, which is considered to have a special status in Indonesian film history, utilizes French semiotician Algirdas Julien Greimas's model of close reading through two stages. The first stage involves a close reading of the narrative aspect of the two structural layers of "Opera Jawa." The second involves an analysis into the signification structure or ideological layer.

Italian neorealism is conventionally read as the authoritative cinematic chronicle of Italy's experience of the Second World War and the Resistance, through canonical films such as Rossellini's Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945). It is important, however, to restore a full picture of the array of genres which narrated and refracted the Resistance experience in the post-war period. To this end, this article looks at a key genre that has been overlooked by scholarship, the opera film or melodramma. In examining Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma (Before Him All Rome Trembled, Gallone, 1946), the article considers Mary Wood's contention (in Italian cinema. Oxford: Berg, 2005, 109) that in this period ‘realist cinematic conventions were insufficient for the maximum perception of the historical context’, and that the ‘affective charge’ of melodrama was essential for restoring this complexity. It assesses the appeal to the emotions produced by the film, and the ways in which this is constructed through the bodily and vocal performance of the opera divo, and questions the critical division between emotion (always viewed as excessive) and authenticity (seen in neorealism, the mode of seriousness) which has seen the opera film relegated to the margins of post-war Italian film history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Der Rosenkavalier as a Silent Movie - In the silent movie Der Rosenkavalier from 1926, which uses an arrangement of the original music by Richard Strauss, is one of the few documents of a cinematic opera adaptation from the time of silent movies. Its medial setting is unique, as the transfer to film necessitates abandoning such fundamental components of the opera as song, text, staging and the symphonic unity of Richard Strauss's music. This text examines strategies of translation from opera into silent movie using, among other examples, the >Prehauser scene<, in which a stage situation is quoted in the film, and also the scene in which the rose is handed over. Here it transpires that the film, for all its narrative and musical modifications, follows the opera down to subtle details. As well as a privileging of movement, which brings a reflexivity and temporality of its own into the film, we can also point to translation strategies that, compared to the 1912 opera, mark a break with the Old Europe of the pre-war era. The silent movie of Der Rosenkavalier thus appears as a typical film document of the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between live performances of opera and the video recordings that capture live performances. Distinctions are made between opera films and recording performances, collaboration between video directors and theater directors are discussed, and distinctions between documenting performances and developing an interpretation of the performance are examined. The view of space in video recordings, the transference of sound, and negative views of operas transmitted through video recordings are explored. Particular focus is given to the video recording of the opera "La pietra del paragone," filmed by the director Philippe Béziat.

An essay is presented which explores the differences between live and televised or recorded performances. Particular focus is given to whether fundamental differences exist between live opera and opera mediated by film or television. A production of the opera "Orfeo ed Euridice," composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, produced by Harry Kupfer, and filmed at Covent Garden in London, England is examined.

The article explores video recordings of operas, discussing differences between live performances and their filmed versions. The limited perspective, selective representation, and presence of performers observed in video recordings is examined and the benefits of recording operatic performances for documentary and research purposes are explored. Film adaptations of operas and the ability to share performances with wider audiences through video recording are also discussed. The author argues that live operatic performances, while different from filmed versions, are not as unique and spontaneous as has been previously argued.

The article reviews the DVD release of the "Ring des Nibelungen," composed by Richard Wagner, organized by Klaus Zehelein, and performed by the Stuttgart Staatsoper.

This article takes as its focus Mark Dornford-May's film opera U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (Dornford-May 2005), set in the South African township of Khayelitsha and based on Bizet's opéra comique Carmen. The authors of the article approach the film opera in a self-consciously audio-visual and interdisciplinary way, paying attention at once to its operatic, filmic and socio-political worlds. They prefer not to rehearse arguments in favour of the politics of gender and sexuality, as is usual in the 'Carmen on film' literature. Rather, an adaptation of Fernando Ortiz's concept of transculturation proves a useful theoretical frame for the study. The way in which U-Carmen eKhayelitsha strives for operatic authenticity (faithfully rendering Bizet) and filmic authenticity (faithfully rendering the township) forces a collision between two conceits of cultural 'difference'. The authors argue that the binaries of sight and sound, stereotypes of 'low' and 'high', local and global, present and past, Africa and opera, textual and contextual are both forcefully articulated and troubled in this film opera. These disarticulations, far from jettisoning the filmic effect, explain U-Carmen eKhayelitsha's enormous vitality, restlessness and enabling energy. In the end, the authors argue that the operatic text and township context are 'de-cultured' and then 're-cultured' in ways that evince powerfully emotional processes of transcultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article recounts the history of opera film to explain its growing interest to audiences and film-makers. The author mentions that before the advent of sound, cinema was already into opera because it offered both spectacle and narrative, which is what cinema needs. When sound was introduced, the opera was used to demonstrate the power of recorded sound. The author focuses on opera films made between 1974-1984 including "Moses and Aron," by Jean-Marie Straub, "The Magic Flute," by Ingmar Bergman, and "Don Giovanni," by Joseph Losey. According to the author, popular interest is growing for the opera, fueled by the re-emergence of opera films, and opera films in turn provide profits for entrepreneurs, publicity for performers and may ultimately remove the elitist label of the opera.