E Lucevan Le Stelle (In Iraq): Brian De Palma's Redacted

Opera lover Brian De Palma has chosen to close his new film Redacted (it has been wildly acclaimed, with a long standing ovation, at the Venice Festival yesterday)  with a montage of many of the horrific photographs taken in Iraq that are too graphic to be published in the papers or shown on television (the faces of the dead and wounded have been blacked out); and the music he has chosen to accompany the montage is Puccini -- E Lucevan Le Stelle. 

Comments

[Henry Holland]

That could work. Don't know how Cavaradossi singing about Tosca's caresses really fits, but the last two lines:

L'ora e fuggita e muoio disperato!
E non ho amato mai tanto la vita!

[I die hopeless, despairing
And never before have I loved life like this!]

would seem to be apt. I hope they use the Corelli version off the Nilsson, Fischer-Dieskau; Maazel recording.

[Bill Koslosky, MD]

I think we can forgive Puccini for the bathos, but not DePalma.