Opera as Soundtrack

Jeongwon Joe is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. She is co-editor of Wagner and Cinema (2010) and Between Opera and Cinema (2002). She has published articles on Milos Forman's Amadeus, Philip Glass's La Belle et la bête, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Gerard Corbiau's Farinelli, and other work related to opera and film music. Her current projects include a monograph, whose working title is Western Opera's Diaspora in Korea: During the Japanese Occupation (1910-1945). She has also served as a music consultant to Chan-wook Park, the director of Cannes award-winning films Oldboy (2004) and Thirst (2009).

• Contents: Prologue: tracing opera as soundtrack; Opera as geno-song; Opera in cinematic death; Opera in Woody Allen’s Match Point; Is cinema’s anxiety opera’s envy?; Film divas: the problem and the power of singing women; Behind the discourse on the opera-cinema encounter: film, music criticism and the ‘great divide’ between modernism and postmodernism; Epilogue: an ethnographic postscript; Select bibliography; Index.

‘This book is a fascinating investigation into the productive frictions between opera and cinema: death, murder, divas, cinema’s effect on opera performances, and opera in the context of the compilation score. Joe’s concept of the "geno-song" in particular is key in soundtrack studies.’Phil Powrie, University of Surrey, UK'Combining an engagement with a wide range of theoretical approaches with well-chosen case studies, Jeongwon Joe’s Opera as Soundtrack will appeal to students of both opera and film music. She explores a variety of operatic tropes in American, European, and Asian film, which cluster particularly around love and death (of course!), and often get entangled in the "problem" of women’s voices, and of women who sing. Joe posits that film’s persistent obsession with and anxiety about opera might just be matched by opera’s envy of this upstart art.’Robynn Stilwell, Georgetown University, USA'Recommended.'-Choice‘Opera as soundtrack offre al lettore numerosi spunti di riflessione e di approfondimento grazie anche alla aggiornatissima bibliografia che spazia, ovviamente, dalla storia del cinema a quella dell’opera. Si tratta comunque di un libro di livello universitario o addirittura post-universitario … ma che potrà dare soddisfazione sia ai melomani sia agli amanti della settima arte.’ [‘Opera as Soundtrack offers the reader much food for thought and more in-depth study thanks also to its extremely up-to-date bibliography which ranges … from the history of cinema to that of opera. This is a book for university level or even post-graduate study … that will also satisfy both opera fans and lovers of The Seventh Art.’] Operaclick