Description
Between 1946 and 1956, with most theatres in ruins after the war, approximately twenty opera-films, which proved to be box-office hits, were produced in Italy. Directed by Clemente Fracassi and presenting an abridged version of Verdi’s work, Aida (1953) was the first Italian opera-film in Technicolor, achieving successful distribution across Europe and the United States. Aida’s character was embodied by the still-unknown Sophia Loren, who lip-synched Renata Tebaldi’s voice – an established practice in opera-films that extended to the other roles.
Building on the studies by Bernard Kuhn (2009) and Marcia Citron (2015), this paper investigates Fracassi’s Aida against the backdrop of post-World-War-II Italy and the contemporary film industry. Firstly, I explore the creative strategies aimed at neutralizing conventions characteristic of opera that, tacitly accepted by operagoers, were deemed incompatible with the cinematic medium. I then address the recourse to theatrical makeup for Sophia Loren and Afro Poli (who interpreted Amonasro, lip-synching Gino Bechi’s voice) to portray Ethiopian ethnicity. This choice, a legacy of operatic staging, clashes with the film’s intent to adapt Verdi’s opera to cinema. Finally, I examine the interpolated scene depicting the Egyptian attack on the Ethiopians and the employment of the so-called ‘Roman salute’ in light of Italy’s ongoing reckoning with its totalitarian past and, in particular, with its colonialist campaign in East Africa. Rooted in Jacques-Louis David’s Le Serment des Horaces (1784) and codified as a marker of antiquity in early-twentieth-century Italian and Hollywood kolossals, the ‘Roman salute’ acquired a distinct political significance during and after the totalitarian regimes that appropriated it, shifting from a tool of propaganda to one of potential critique. Drawing a parallel with Mervyn LeRoy’s film Quo vadis (1951), I argue that Fracassi’s Aida can be interpreted as an intentionally ambiguous ideological product, offering hooks for a reading that subtly condemns Fascism.
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