Screen Interpretations of Opera Classics

Abstract

The study considers filmed versions of classical operas as an example of inter-art interaction. We compare film adaptation with such method of artistic activity as interpretation — the rendition of an opera by means of the cinema. The translation of the content of an opera into the screen language emphasizes the dialogic nature of a new, cinematic work. There is an analysis of the films based on the opera Female Hireling by composer Mykhaylo Verykivskyi by such domestic film directors as Iryna Molostova and Vasyl Lapoknysh, as well as the opera The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart directed by Ingmar Bergman (Sweden) and Kenneth Branagh (Britain). These films accentuate the main issue of film adaptation of an opera — the interpretation of an opera into a new artistic phenomenon. This type of screen adaptation is deemed quite controversial and insufficiently studied in domestic art history. The implementation of artistic methods of opera in other art inevitably affects the stylistic, formal unity of a newly created text. Intermediation as one of research methodologies of an artistic text is based on a number of popular theories about the synthetic nature of arts. The synthesis of the cinema with various literary genres, various kinds of arts, in particular operatic and theatrical ones, allows us to talk about intermediation not only as a methodology for analyzing a screen text but also as a specific way of constructing it. The purpose of the study is to determine the cinematic methods that have enabled the artistic synthesis of operatic and cinematic arts or were aimed by film directors at bringing the conventionality of opera as close as possible to the laws of the screen expression. The attention on the intermediate aspect of studying an artistic text, which is based on a number of currently popular theories about the synthetic nature of arts, was focused. The method of semiotically analyzing the texts of screen works is applied for studying their poly-code features — the creation of an artistic image by verbal and nonverbal components.Topicality, in both the 20th and the 21st centuries, the issues and ideas that have formed the basis of classical operas was proven. Rendering an opera piece of art into a new artistic phenomenon corroborates the opinion that a film opera diversifies the range of screen expressive means and proves its ability to exist as an independent cinematic genre.