Opera in cinema & cinema in operaBorislav Gueorguiev, PhDNew Bulgarian University

In honorem Raina Kabaivanska

Opera vs. cinema

Three stages in opera film making

1. Documentary (reportage). 2. Real movies - differences in soundtracks

performances:2.1. Music score only;2.2. Music score + natural sounds;2.3. Music score + natural sounds +

trailers + subtitles.3. Documentary+.

The Problem

How to do an interface between mass culture restricted (?) code and haute culture elaborated and sophisticated opera codes (verbal, musical, and visual)?

The technical problem: how to translate the language of stage opera production in more acceptable manner of representation for the mass audience?

First attempts to profane the opera singing

First attempts to profane the opera singing

Film opera trailerStage opera trailer

Translation, of courseRoman Jakobson’s three kinds of translation:

● Intra-lingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.

● Inter-lingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language.

● Inter-semiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems .

Conversion (or Transfiguration)

● Fourth kind of translation.● Inter-discourse translation.● Conversion by means of another discourse framework.

Conversion in grammar: kind word formation process in which a word of one grammatical form becomes a word of another grammatical form without any changes to spelling or pronunciation.

to help - a help

How it works?

● “To convert” in word formation means to replace one grammar paradigm (e.g. verbal) with another (e.g. noun).

● Paradigm (from Kuhn to contemporary philosophy) - manner of thinking, manner of viewing the world.

● In our case: manner of camera moving.

Some ОПОЯЗ (OPOYAZ) statements about the poetics of cinema

Dominant: “may be considered the focusing component of the work of art: it rules, determines and transform the remaining components. It is the dominant which guarantees the integrity of the structure“.

Roman Jakobson, ‘The Dominant’, 1935. In: Selected Writings, Vol.3 : Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry

(1962).

Dominant and linguistic empathy

John kisses Mary [‘Mary is John’s wife’].John kisses his wife.

Susumo Kuno: “In producing natural sentences, speakers unconsciously make the same kind of decisions that film directors make about where to place themselves with respect to the events and states that their sentence are intended to describe.”(p. 204).

Functional Syntax. Anaphora, Discourse, and Empathy, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

The dominant in cinema• Photogeny or “cinegeny”: empathy on (male) erotica.

• The cinema displaces the dominant feature of theatre - the audible word - with a new dominant: movement observed in details.

The knife in 2nd act of “Tosca” (Puccini)

1. Maria Callas & Tito Gobbi, ROH, 1964 dir. by Zeffirelli2. Raina Kabaivanska & Sherill Milnes, 1976, dir. by De Bosio3. Angela Gheorgiu & Ruggiero Raimondi, 2002, dir. by Jacquot

Thank you!http://bogeo.net