“Opera!” will be shown nationwide in art cinemas with Vincent Cassel in an important supporting role, distributed by Pannónia Entertainment Ltd.
A blend of classical film acting … traditional opera singing … both the music … special visual effects representing several eras at once, to the viewers.
Short summary … The Italian film tells the classic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice, adapted to the present day, while Vincent Cassel brings the character of the taxi driver, Charon, to life alongside the two main characters. Eurydice is fatally wounded by an unexpected gunshot at her own wedding. Her love, Orpheus, cannot accept the loss, so he sets off to the underworld to bring her back to the living. In this special adaptation, the underworld appears in the form of the mysterious Grand Hades Hotel, where Orpheus encounters strange figures and must confront his own fears and memories. His journey is accompanied by arias from world-famous operas, as the boundaries between love and death gradually blur.
The film is not a traditional musical, but a spectacular operatic fantasy, in which the story is told using well-known arias by Antonio Vivaldi, Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi, among others. The visuals are made special by the costumes and surreal sets designed by Dolce & Gabbana.
So far the film has been shown in relatively few countries and what’s more interesting in Cassel’s homeland, France. The musical scores go beyond classical operas and provide an interesting mix, as in addition to the aforementioned big names, songs from the synthpop of the 80s are heard, in our case with a transcription of one of Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s hits, which truly combined the worlds of symphonic orchester and early electronic music with a truly brilliant sound mix.
The director duo has worked with a similar concept in opera houses and theaters in recent years, and they have now converted the experiences they gained there into the language of film.
This opera is raised to a new narrative and visual level in order to restore the declining popularity of lyrical storytelling to our days, i.e. they wanted to modernize and update the first libretto and address today’s generation in the language of pop with cinema. They created a blend of classical film acting and traditional opera singing, and both the music and the special and visual effects represent several eras at once, and the digital backgrounds and physical sets blend harmoniously with each other. The two main characters were chosen from hundreds of young opera singers.
This is the first production in Italy intended for direct cinema, which was shot almost entirely with virtual elements, at the Prodea Led Studio in Turin. This allowed the creation of visual world, which is key to depicting the dreamlike nature of the entire work. The creators aimed to get the most out of it, giving meaning and parallels to our time on several levels, while the technology also superbly supported the grandeur of the story itself.
This film brings classical Italian opera into a new era, while being both modern and respectful of tradition. Most probably, for those who have never heard the genre before, and/or for those who have been fans of it for a long time. It transfers the structure of the musical to the world of opera, creating a new film genre: the opera-musical.
Screenings can be found nationwide in selected cinemas with Hungarian subtitles from the 23 rd. of July, 2026. – Duration time: 106-minute genre mix unique?
Age-restricted film above 16 yrs.
Recommendation by Aggie Reiter
RSS - Posts