Opera film: History and Key Facts

The opera film or opera-film is a film genre in which an opera is the subject of the entire film, as opposed to a film which only incorporates opera scenes or elements. It is a subgenre of the musical film. Opera films are usually based on established, well-known works; less frequently they showcase new operas, such as Tommy (1975), which is based on The Who's 1969 rock opera album Tommy.

The idea of presenting operas on film goes back to the very beginnings of cinema; Thomas Edison, who made major contributions to the making and making available to the public films in the infancy of moviemaking, told The New York Times in 1893 that his goal was "to have such a happy combination of photography and electricity that a man can sit in his own parlor, see depicted upon a curtain the forms of the players in opera upon a distant stage and hear the voices of the singers."

The first opera film was a two-minute production of La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment), based on the 1840 work by Gaetano Donizetti, which premiered in New York City in July 1898. In the silent film era, music was performed live by orchestras and pianists. Major opera singers appeared in these films; for example Enrico Caruso and Pol Plançon appeared in a 1911 short, a scene from Lucia di Lammermoor, as Edgardo and Raimundo.

In July 1930, German and Austrian film companies agreed to divide up the opera field, with the former receiving exclusive rights to works by Richard Wagner and the latter receiving everything else.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Opera film by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.