Opera
Short description
A young soprano, Betty, is given the chance to step into the lead role in Verdi's Macbeth after the singer originally cast in the part suffers an accident. The opera is widely considered unlucky for those who perform it, and Betty accepts the role despite her misgivings. Her success is followed by a series of killings, with a disturbed admirer forcing her to witness crimes committed against people close to her. What begins as a stalker's obsession becomes something more intimate and harder to escape.
Dario Argento directed and produced the film, his ninth in a career that includes seventeen features to date; it followed Phenomena and preceded Two Evil Eyes. He wrote the screenplay with Franco Ferrini. Cristina Marsillach plays Betty, alongside Ian Charleson, Urbano Barberini, Daria Nicolodi, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni and Antonella Vitale. Twenty-two cast members and eighty-two crew are credited.
Made in Italy for about eight million dollars, the film draws its horror from the opera world and the superstition attached to Macbeth. Audience response has been solid rather than unanimous: on IMDb it holds 6.9 from roughly 22,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.7 from a much smaller base of 543. A critics' rating of 7 out of 10 across 21 reviews places professional opinion slightly above those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- For the majority of the film, music by Giuseppe Verdi is used as the soundtrack.
- The problems and difficulties that arose during the making of the film (including the death of one of the actors) led director Dario Argento to believe that the so-called "Curse of Macbeth" was to blame for everything. This refers to a superstition that pronouncing the surname "Macbeth" outside of lines in Shakespeare's play will bring a curse upon oneself.
- According to Urbano Barberini, catching the crows that were released in the opera house after filming took several hours. About 140 birds were used, and approximately 60 were subsequently caught. The rest presumably flew out of the building during filming.
- The role of Mara was initially assigned to actress Vanessa Redgrave, but she left the project shortly before filming began. After that, the script was rewritten, and the significance of this role noticeably decreased. According to actor William McNamara, Redgrave was cast in a role that would have taken no more than a week to film, and she left the project without ever appearing on set, although she was paid her full fee.
- All of William McNamara's lines were dubbed by an actor of English origin. McNamara himself did not realize this until he watched the entire film, and said he should have guessed something was wrong, since there was no boom operator with a microphone on set during filming.
- Daria Nicolodi (1950-2020) initially did not want to take on the role of Mira. She felt that the role was poorly written, and she had only recently broken up with Dario Argento, with whom she had been in a romantic relationship for many years. Ultimately, she agreed because she liked the scene of her character's death, although she later admitted that it was a little scary to film, as the actress was required to attach a tiny amount of explosive to the back of her head.
- The ending of the film was shot in the same location as the beginning of Dario Argento’s other film, "Phenomenon."
- Initially, Columbia Pictures planned to release the film in German cinemas in 1988, but censors demanded the removal of 25 minutes of footage (mainly scenes of violence), and the film was released directly to DVD, even though its theatrical release had already been officially announced.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
