Johanna Ethnersson Pontara. Photo: Niklas Björling / Stockholm University

In recent decades, scholars have argued that a new way of understanding opera (and other classical music) has been articulated in 21st century feature films through a fragmentary and background-oriented way of using opera performances as well as opera music. Opera functions as an overall atmosphere, which means that a traditional notion of this type of music as a stable whole, and the focus of the listener’s attention, is challenged. In this article, by drawing attention to Benoît Jacquot’s film Tosca (2001), I discuss how this way of using opera affects the representation of the singer. This is a film adaptation of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca that is characterized by an experimental approach to image and sound editing. Through an in-depth analysis of the way the opera’s two main characters are featured in the film in three famous arias, when the singers playing these characters are expected to showcase themselves as performers, I argue that the image of the opera singer is renegotiated by bringing it in line with contemporary feature film aesthetics. Two aspects of the vocal performance that are central for the conception of opera as a stable whole, and as an object of attention, are subverted: the embodiment of an opera character and the showcasing of a singer. The music-image combinations make the singers fade as vocal performers whereas the fictional characters are promoted. However, they are promoted in ways that differ from how these characters are modelled in Puccini’s score.

About Johanna Ethnersson Pontara

Johanna Ethnarsson Pontara is an associate professor at The Department of Culture and Aesthetics. Her research field is opera and in particular performance-theory and the representation of gender. She is responsible for the subject of musicology at the department of Culture and Aestethics and the director of studies for the research level in Musicology.