Vincenzo Bellini on Stage and Screen, 1935-2020

Emilio Sala, Graziella Seminara, Emanuele Senici

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781501391194
• eBook ISBN: 9781501391200
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

Vincenzo Bellini on Stage and Screen, 1935–2020 offers nine case studies of the history of Vincenzo Bellini's operas on stage, on screen, and in sound, video and performance art. This investigation begins in 1935, the hundredth anniversary of the composer's death and the year when his first biopic was released, and ends in 2020, when performance artist Marina Abramovic's 'opera project' 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, whose final scene is accompanied by Bellini's famous aria 'Casta Diva, ' was premiered. In Part One, several recent productions of La sonnambula, Norma and I Puritani are discussed from different perspectives, but the common focus is on the possible meanings of these works for contemporary spectators. Part Two, centered on cinema, includes chapters on biopics of Bellini that make extensive use of his music, as well as on the presence of this music in soundtracks of films from the last half century. Part Three turns to other media or mixtures of stage and screen, and focuses on Bellini in sound and video art of the last few decades, on YouTube and its fandom, and on 7 Deaths of Maria Callas. The volume offers an expansive view of the many ways in which Bellini's operas have been visualized and conceptualized over the past century, and of what they may have meant, and may still mean, for twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One Bellini on the Stage
• 1 Staging La sonnambula in the Twenty-First Century
• 2 Opera and Trauma: Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito’s I Puritani
• 3 Norma, Ibsen and I: Experiencing Relevance and Exploring Reality in Bellini’s Opera
• Part Two Bellini in the Cinema
• 4 From the Apotheosis of Italian Genius to Melodrama: Carmine Gallone’s Casta Diva
• 5 Carmine Gallone’s Casta Diva and the Italian Composer Biopic, 1935–1954: Pastiche, History and Affect
• 6 Emotion and Temporality: ‘Casta Diva’ in Film Soundtracks, 1980–2011
• Part Three Adaptations and Mixed Media
• 7 Remediating Bellini Through Sound and Video Art: Christian Marclay’s Maria Callas in Context
• 8 Bellini’s Digital Liveness
• 9 ‘Casta Diva’ Reimagined: Staging Death in Marina Abramović’s 7 Deaths of Maria Callas
• Contributors
• Index
• Copyright