The boundaries of opera, as in all art forms, are constantly being re-evaluated. This analysis examines one of the most recent developments in opera-the use of film as source material, and connections to the film world- through analyzing three operas: Austrian composer, Olga Neuwirth’s opera, Lost Highway, Chinese-American composer, Tan Dun’s opera, The First Emperor, and acclaimed American film composer, Rachel Portman’s opera, The Little Prince. Each of these works exemplifies the modern relationship of opera and film in different ways. To classify these newly film-influenced works, the term cinemopera is used in describing operas connected to or influenced by film. Analytical techniques and historical perspectives, as well as revealing how these three operas are associated with the film world through their composers, source materials, and styles are the tools utilized to establish the characteristics of cinemopera as an operatic subcategory. Also, a definition and discussion of intertextuality in these operas reveals not only their cinematic features, but their ties to common practices in music history. Lost Highway is one of the most intertextual works containing sound effects, electronic music, and drawing heavily upon the David Lynch film of the same name as its source material. The First Emperor is an interesting study in modern ethnomusicology and contains many links to film in its source material as well. The Little Prince has a different kind of intertextuality than the preceding two operas because its source material is a French children’s book. However, since its composer, Rachel Portman, is a very distinguished film composer, it represents many elements of style commonly found in cinemopera. Finally, opera as a business is changing due to its convergence with film. The visual aspect of opera productions is of increasing importance, as is a singer’s credibility in the role they are portraying. Singers must look their parts much more so now than even two decades ago. As cinemopera is explored herein and its effects on the business are discussed, so are the elements of style which clearly serve to classify an opera as cinemopera.

The filmic oeuvre of auteur director David Lynch has a reputation among average spectators as being too “difficult” to understand. In particular, the Lynch films Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are considered by the average spectator to be devoid of any real meaning. Spectator theory provides insight into the structures through which spectators find or fail to find meaning in films. Spectator theory explains that the average spectator has a set of schemas for “reading” and understanding film, and that these schemas are shaped by the conventions of popular Hollywood cinema. The films of David Lynch do not adhere to these conventions, and thus challenge the average spectator’s competency with regard to their ability to emplot a coherent and meaningful narrative from these films. In the case of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, the films present the spectator with multiple mysteries, yet never provide any solutions to these mysteries. If a spectator is to find meaning in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, then such a spectator needs an appropriate schema for interpreting these films. This dissertation aims to develop one possible schema which can be used to find meaning in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. To this end, the films Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are shown to qualify as metaphysical detective films, a genre of narrative which playfully interprets the conventions of classical detective narrative. Under the neologism “transtextual detective” this dissertation traces the characteristics of a spectator who would assume the role of a detective figure, existing outside of the borders of the film text, and calling upon a diverse collection of texts and schemata to solve the mysteries identifiable in these metaphysical detective films. In order to test the applicability of the schema of the transtextual detective, the writer undertakes a demonstration of an investigation into the films Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive while assuming the role of a transtextual detective. The writer firstly indentifies the mystery of identity as a salient mystery in both films, before demonstrating how solutions to this mystery can be found in Lost Highway. / Thesis (MA (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The filmic oeuvre of auteur director David Lynch has a reputation among average spectators as being too “difficult” to understand. In particular, the Lynch films Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are considered by the average spectator to be devoid of any real meaning. Spectator theory provides insight into the structures through which spectators find or fail to find meaning in films. Spectator theory explains that the average spectator has a set of schemas for “reading” and understanding film, and that these schemas are shaped by the conventions of popular Hollywood cinema. The films of David Lynch do not adhere to these conventions, and thus challenge the average spectator’s competency with regard to their ability to emplot a coherent and meaningful narrative from these films. In the case of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, the films present the spectator with multiple mysteries, yet never provide any solutions to these mysteries. If a spectator is to find meaning in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, then such a spectator needs an appropriate schema for interpreting these films. This dissertation aims to develop one possible schema which can be used to find meaning in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. To this end, the films Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive are shown to qualify as metaphysical detective films, a genre of narrative which playfully interprets the conventions of classical detective narrative. Under the neologism “transtextual detective” this dissertation traces the characteristics of a spectator who would assume the role of a detective figure, existing outside of the borders of the film text, and calling upon a diverse collection of texts and schemata to solve the mysteries identifiable in these metaphysical detective films. In order to test the applicability of the schema of the transtextual detective, the writer undertakes a demonstration of an investigation into the films Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive while assuming the role of a transtextual detective. The writer firstly indentifies the mystery of identity as a salient mystery in both films, before demonstrating how solutions to this mystery can be found in Lost Highway. / Thesis (MA (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

No description available.

Le genre filmique – moteur par excellence de la cinématographie hollywoodienne – s’est imposé, au cours des dernières décennies, comme un champ théorique à part entière des études cinématographiques. Or, sa reconnaissance tardive au sein de la recherche universitaire témoigne du paradoxe structurant le champ cinématographique hollywoodien. En effet, la tension qu’entretient Hollywood entre l’industrie du divertissement et le cinéma d’art se révèle d’une façon particulière à travers la notion de genre cinématographique, qui s’avère à la fois un canevas de fabrication et un espace de création. Ce mémoire vise l’étude du genre filmique selon trois articulations : d’un point de vue institutionnel, d’abord, en questionnant les enjeux du champ cinématographique hollywoodien ; d’un point de vue théorique, ensuite, au moyen d’une plongée au sein des conventions et des procédés de trois genres filmiques ; et finalement, à travers l’analyse d’un corpus de films du réalisateur David Lynch. Ainsi, l’œuvre de Lynch, par son caractère marginal, inclassable et profondément étrange, donnera lieu à un parcours, certes, atypique, mais néanmoins significatif de ces trois niveaux de l’étude du genre filmique, dictant par le fait même une division en deux parties du travail. Dans un premier temps, le mémoire s’attardera à mettre en perspective la définition du champ hollywoodien et la trajectoire de Lynch, ce qui nous permettra d’identifier trois genres filmiques qui présentent un ancrage particulier au sein de la filmographie lynchienne, soit le thriller, le film noir et l’horreur. Dans un deuxième temps, nous procéderons à l’analyse filmique de Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997) et Mulholland Drive (2001), trois films qui adoptent la logique de la trilogie en proposant, reprenant, puis aboutissant à un certain nombre de motifs issus des conventions génériques. Ainsi, les grilles de lecture des genres filmiques explorés par le cinéaste permettront d’observer la dimension à la fois classique et expérimentale de l’œuvre lynchienne par rapport à la cinématographie hollywoodienne tout en exposant les innovations du cinéaste à l’égard d’éléments génériques spécifiques. / The film genre – the driving force par excellence of Hollywood cinematography – has established itself in recent decades as a theoretical field in its own right in Film Studies. However, its late recognition within academia testifies to the paradox underlying Hollywood cinematography. Indeed, the tension that Hollywood maintains between the entertainment industry and art cinema is revealed in a particular way through the concept of cinematographic genre, which turns out to be both a canvas for production and a space for creation. This thesis aims to study the film genre according to three articulations: first, from an institutional perspective by questioning the challenges within the Hollywood cinematographic field from a theoretical point of view; second, by exploring the conventions and processes of three film genres; and thirdly, through the analysis of a corpus of films by director David Lynch. Thus, Lynch's work, by its marginal, unclassifiable and profoundly strange character, will lay the foundation for an admittedly atypical, but nevertheless significant analysis of these three levels of study of the film genre, thereby dividing this work in two parts. Initially, the thesis will focus on putting into perspective the definition of the Hollywood field and Lynch's trajectory, which will allow us to identify three significant film genres within Lynch’s filmography, namely the thriller, film noir and horror. In a second step, we will proceed with the filmic analysis of Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001), three films which adopt the logic of a trilogy by proposing, summarizing then culminating in a certain number of motifs from generic conventions. Thus, the analytical perspectives from the film genres explored by the filmmaker will allow us to observe both the classical and experimental style of the Lynchian work in Hollywood cinematography while exhibiting the filmmaker's contribution to certain elements of filmic genre.

The films of David Lynch are full of ambiguities that derive from his habitual distortion of time, inversion of characters, and creation of ironic, dreamlike worlds that are mired in crisis. While these ambiguities have been explored from numerous angles, scholars have only recently begun to closely examine music's role in Lynch's cinematic imagination. This dissertation explores the relationship between music and fantasy through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis where fantasy plays a crucial role in helping psychoanalytical subjects work through their psychical crises. In particular, I look at Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1996), and Mulholland Drive (2001), showing how Lynch employs music to manage and, in the case of Mulholland Drive, move beyond the particular crises of jouissance experienced by the Characters--and also the viewers. Before engaging in my analysis of Lynch's film music, however, I begin with an extended discussion of what Kevin Korsyn describes as the current crisis of music scholarship, examining how this crisis manifests itself in recent "postmodern" interpretations of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Few works are invested with as much cultural capital as this one and arguably the discourse around it exhibits the crisis more acutely than any other. Korsyn restricts his analysis to the fields of musicology and music theory, but I approach the crisis of music scholarship obliquely, through my Lacanian reading of Lynch's film music. This dissertation, then, has two goals. On one hand it attempts to examine music's role in Lynch's films, and on the other, it explores how Lynch's use of music might aid us in navigating and moving beyond the institutional crises of music scholarship. This Lynchian solution to our crisis provides a glimpse of what might lie beyond postmodernism, a new philosophical movement some are calling the "New Sincerity." This term covers several loosely related cultural or philosophical movements that have followed in the wake of postmodernism, the most notable being what Raoul Eshelman and Judith Butler refer to as "performatism." Finally, I return to Beethoven's Ninth to offer a second, performative reading, demonstrating how Lynch's use of music can be translated into current musical discourse. / text