Opera (1987) on Netflix
When Mara Cecova is injured, her understudy Betty takes over as Lady Macbeth at the Parma opera house. A masked intruder watches from an empty box, and people around Betty start dying.
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- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Betty, an understudy at the Parma opera house, steps into the role of Lady Macbeth when the company's prima donna, Mara Cecova, is hurt by a passing car outside the theater. Betty takes the part despite her misgivings, and the performance wins over the audience. From an empty box, a masked intruder watches her sing, then kills a stagehand who orders him out. The same figure later breaks into the home of her boyfriend Stefano, binds her, and tapes needles beneath her eyes so she cannot look away while the intruder attacks Stefano. Betty confides in Marco, the director of the production, and tells him the masked man resembles a figure from her childhood. Inspector Alan Santini arrives to question the opera staff.
Cast
- Maurizio Garroneas Maurizio, the raven trainer
Show all 20 cast
- Cristina Giachinoas Maria, the assistant director
- György Gyõriványias Miro
- Bjorn Hammeras Cop #1
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Opera (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Opera was Dario Argento's most expensive film to that point, initially budgeted at 10 billion lire before being cut to seven billion. The single scene filmed from the ravens' point of view around the theatre cost 1 billion lire on its own.
- Dario Argento first wanted Jennifer Connelly for the role of Betty but dropped the idea to avoid comparisons with his film Phenomena, then tried to cast Mia Sara of Legend before fashion designer Giorgio Armani suggested Cristina Marsillach.
- Argento had written the role of Mara Cecova for Vanessa Redgrave, who quit shortly before production began; Daria Nicolodi was cast in the part instead, and the character was then cut down to point-of-view shots and voiceover, with Nicolodi playing Betty's agent Mira.
- In 1985 Dario Argento was hired by the Sferisterio di Macerata to direct Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, his planned debut as an opera director. His staging would have put devices in theatre seats that released voltage during thunderstorm scenes; the theatre rejected the idea and Argento backed out.
- Marsillach said she suffered real burns from the many takes she needed for the scene where her character is tied to a chair in a burning room, during what Alan Jones called an arduous 15-week shoot.
- Orion Pictures planned to put Opera out in the United States in a truncated cut missing almost thirty minutes, including the Swiss Alps ending, then scrapped the American theatrical release, and the film also failed to get a UK theatrical run.
- According to Michele Soavi, Dario Argento spent two years working on the script for Opera, and early drafts went beyond a level of gore that any country apart from Japan would have found unacceptable.
- As further problems for Argento, he and Daria Nicolodi were arrested for drug possession after police found hashish in their home.
