Grandi Film Storici

Venice Film Festival 1940

Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone was still in his "operetta" mode when he helmed 1938's Il Sogno di Butterfly (Dream of the Butterfly) Maria Cebotari plays opera diva Rosa Belloni, currently starring in a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The plot thickens when Rosa's backstage life begins to mirror the travails of the character she is portraying. The climax comes when Harry Peters (Fosco Giachetti), the American father of Rosa's illegitimate child, returns after four years with his new wife in tow, leading inexorably to a doleful ending both on- and offstage. Critics complained about the substandard photography in Il Sogno di Butterfly, but this might have been due to poor laboratory work.

This tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, La maledizione (The Curse), refers to the curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke and eventually sacrifices her life to save him from the assassins hired by her father.

The occupation of Bessarabia by the Russians in 1940 separates an opera singer from her family, leaving her under Bolshevik rule until Romanian troops enter Odessa.

The great Italian opera composer recalls his eventful life on his deathbed: his childhood in Busseto, his studies in Milan, his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio", the death of his wife and his children killed by smallpox.

Manon escapes with the young nobleman Des Grieux, then becomes a high-class courtesan and finally forced to exile to America.

A young farmer, with a magnificent voice, receives an invitation to present himself in a large theater to be hired. In reality, the invitation is a joke made by his cousin.

Rather than renouncing his artistic dreams and working in his father's company, a young man, who is vocally equipped, is content to perform at street corners. This allows him to know and fall in love with a beautiful blind girl.