Interrupted Melodies: Flaws, Failings and Foibles in the Biopics Devoted to Opera Divas

Abstract

Biopics of opera singers’ lives remain fairly scarce. They usually focus on the obstacles and accidents that mark an otherwise exceptional progress. This paper, devoted to the fictionalisation of such figures as Maria Malibran, Marjorie Lawrence and Maria Callas, aims at showing that it is mainly through the treatment of voice that difficulties are apprehended. In the case of the movie devoted to Marjorie Lawrence, Interrupted Melody, the re-appropriation of the singer’s body and her victory over polio are mediated by vocal exertions, while Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever emphasizes the gaps between Callas’s and Fanny Ardant’s respective singing and speaking voices. All in all, it is Sacha Guitry’s movie La Malibran that best illustrates Michel Poizat’s psychoanalytical theory of the Angel’s Cry, as expounded in his book The Angel’s Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera. Whatever glance may be cast on the subject, operatic voices remain the object of multiple interrogations and fascinations.