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The Greek Orpheus-Eurydice myth is repurposed into a rollicking and plaintive musical in Paolo Gep Cucco and Davide Livermore’s The Opera! Orpheus (Valentino Buzza) sets out to take back his lover (Mariam Battistelli) from the clutches of the underworld. There’s Hotel Hades that assumes a central role and the ferrying by Charon (Vincent Cassel seemingly having a blast) as the linking mode. Orpheus is more confused and desperate than grieving the untimely loss of his beloved. He seeks reunion as well as answers. His pursuit of her spills across a skidding through varying genres and templates.

The film’s design is intently swashbuckling and fantastical. Worlds of myth and movies and musicals collide and coalesce into a dreamy, occasionally stunning hybrid. To orchestrate them convincingly demands a high degree of conviction and ease with style and sass. It’s not easy to pull it off without seeming labored in certain places.

Exclusive: Vincent Cassel has built a reputation over his 30-year career for playing bad and good guys with a menacing, violent edge from Vinz in La Haine, to ruthless gangster Jacques Mesrine, or a tough-talking mercenary in the Apple TV+ series Liaison.

It is a surprise then to discover the French star in the role of the Greek mythology figure of Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, reimagined as a gentlemanly taxi driver, with charmingly accented but grammatically perfect English in The Opera!, which world premieres in the Rome Film Festival on Friday evening.

Based loosely on tragic love story Orpheus and Eurydice, Davide Livermore and creative director Paolo Gep Cucco’s original telling of the ancient legend mixes opera arias from Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Mozart, Vivaldi, Boito and Gluck with pop classics such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “The Power of Love.”

Cassel tops a cast also featuring Caterina Murino,...

Nolita Cinema’s musical Hear Me Love, starring France’s biggest pop star Clara Luciani in her first lead role, has started shooting in Paris as part of a revival of the film musical in France.

Set between Paris and Rome’s Cinecitta’s Studios in the 1970s, Hear Me Love (Joli Joli) follows a struggling writer looking for inspiration for his second novel who falls in love with a famous movie star. It is the fifth feature by French film and theatre director Diastème and is being scored by composer Alex Beaupain.

Ginger & Fed is selling the film...

Vincent Cassel and Caterina Murino (“Casino Royal”) will show off their acting range in “The Opera!,” an €11 million film starring famed opera singers Mariam Battistelli and Rame Lahaj.

Pulsar Content is repping the hot project which is produced by Showlab and Rai Cinema, with Dolce&Gabbana on board to co-produce and design the costumes.

“The Opera!” is based on a modern version of the famous Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and will be directed by longtime opera partners Davide Livermore and Paolo Gep Cucco who are the only ones to have presented the world premiere of La Scala four times in a row. The movie, teased by Pulsar at the Cannes Market, showcases different musical references spanning from opera, pop and electro.

Longtime opera partners Davide Livermore and Paolo Gep Cucco are directing the film. The pair have broken records as they have presented the world premiere of La Scala four times in a row.

Italian actor Caterina Murino, best known globally for playing Solange in James Bond movie “Casino Royale,” will be the master of ceremonies at the upcoming Venice Film Festival.

Born in Cagliari, Sardegna, Murino made her big screen debut in 2002 in late Chilean writer/director Luis Sepulveda’s political drama “Nowhere” which played well in France. She returned to French film screens in 2004 in “L’Enquete Corse” opposite actors Christian Clavier and Jean Reno.

In 2006 Murino gained global visibility as the new 007 Bond Girl alongside Daniel Craig with her role as the shady seductive Solange Dimitrios in “Casino Royale.”

She subsequently starred in British comedy “St.Trinian’s” and in 2008 attended Venice as protagonist of Italian Director Pappi Corsicato’s “The Seed of Discord.”

In 2017 Murino starred in U.S. supernatural thriller “The Voice in Stone” and in 2021 appeared in Alex de la Iglesia’s “Veneciafrenia” and in Netflix family dramedy “My Brother, My Sister,...

Milan’s venerable La Scala opera house on Monday will stage a globally distributed TV gala event featuring its mask-wearing orchestra in the empty venue and a multimedia medley of arias and other performances by opera, ballet, pop music and screen stars, substituting its canceled season opener.

Due to the pandemic, La Scala has been forced to call off its traditional December opera opening, among the top events on Europe’s cultural calendar, for the first time since the Second World War. Until recently, the planned opener was Gaetano Doninzetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” with U.S. soprano Lisette Oropesa set to perform the title role.

Oropesa (pictured) would have been the first American to perform the La Scala opening since Maria Callas in the 1950s.

Instead she will be part of a lineup comprising 24 star talents, also including Placido Domingo, tenor Juan Diego Florez, dancer Roberto Bolle, Sting and Italian actor Caterina Murino,...