Opera

Boasting quite possibly Argento's most iconic single image, almost certainly his most spectacular death, and indisputably his most insane ending.

Thrust into the lead role of an avant-garde staging of Verdi’s Macbeth, an understudy finds herself stalked by a killer who forces her to watch his murders.

Inspired by his own failed production of Verdi’s Rigoletto, Opera (like Tenebrae) sees Argento in self-reflexive mode, interrogating the spectacle and consumption of violence as entertainment. Meanwhile the soundtrack, a discordant coupling of Verdi’s melancholic arias with thrashing heavy metal riffs, is a perfect aural metaphor for a filmmaker always balanced on a knife-edge between high and low art. This presentation is in Italian with English subtitles.