Operatic Mythologies, Political Performativity, and Cinema: Verdi, Visconti, and the Risorgimento

Abstract

This paper locates Visconti's use of music/opera in the politics of his film production for the Italian, European and broadly democratic cinema, taking into account the realist/aestheticist controversies of the times, and their relationship with the exigencies of commercial production and popularity (in 'lavish' costume dramas). The paper then unwinds the political character of Visconti's treatment of Camillo Boïto's nineteenth-century novella in his screenplay, catching its counterpoint with the Risorgimento that he is mythologically invoking. The Verdi legend plays its part in this, and I then turn to historical investigations that link the important aspects of the legend to mythologizing and politicizing activities of the 1950s and 1890s. Considering the political Verdi himself, I examine his operatic productions, and locate his political interventions at stages much later than the Risorgimento struggles which undoubtedly surrounded his works of the 1850s and 1840s, but with which there was little substantial (and no legendary) connection. Working deconstructively I argue that historical accuracy is of course irrelevant as a criterion of effective democratic politics, and that popular communication necessarily works through remythologizations of an imagined past, performed in venues where meaning can be vividly and emotionally conveyed. 'The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living' (no apologies to Marx!). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]