When Opera Meets Film

Marcia J. Citron is Lovett Distinguished Service Professor of Musicology at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University. She is the author of Opera on Screen (2000), as well as numerous articles on the topic of opera and film, in journals including Musical Quarterly, Music and Letters, and the Journal of Musicology. Her other area of interest is women and gender in music, and she has written three books on this topic: Gender and the Musical Canon (1993), which won an award from the International Alliance for Women in Music; Letters of Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn (1987), which was awarded 'Outstanding Academic Book' by Choice magazine; and Cécile Chaminde: A Bio-Bibliography (1988).

• Introduction; Part I. Style: 1. Operatic style in Coppola's Godfather trilogy; 2. Opera as fragment: 'Liebestod' and 'Nessun dorma' in Aria; Part II. Subjectivity: 3. Subjectivity in the opera-films of Jean-Pierre Ponelle; 4. Don Giovanni and subjectivity in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie; Part III. Desire: 5. 'An honest contrivance': opera and desire in Moonstruck; 6. The sound of desire: Così's 'Soave sia il vento' in Sunday, Bloody Sunday and Closer; Epilogue; Bibliography; Filmography and videography.

'Citron provides a fascinating, detailed study of the interrelationship between opera and film across several specific films and a number of the opera/films of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle … This book will make readers want to view the films in question to consider the issues Citron explores and the subjective interpretations she employs. Even those who do not agree with her will find that they will never again view the films in the same way.' Choice