Hercules, Vampires, and the Opera of Attractions.

Opera's specter has long haunted film and more recently, film haunts opera productions seeking to entice new audiences. Patrick Morganelli's opera Hercules vs. Vampires (2010) harnesses the tension between live and recorded media. In this production, singers deliver their lines in loose synchronization with the film's characters, dubbing over the original's visuals with operatic voices. By encouraging an attentive rather than absorptive mode of consumption, Hercules vs. Vampires restores to both opera and film a joy and effervescence made possible through the pungent postmodern incongruencies of the high art of opera and the popular Italian sword and sandal film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]