Melodramma as historical consciousness and musical movements
in Luchino Visconti’s Senso and Il Gattopardo
Italian opera in 19th century was profitable investiment of
revolutionary theories between groups of Risorgimento’s ideologists.
Verdi’s music played a leading role on the national unity’s eve. In
20th century it still was a cliché laying dormant a long time in joint
imagination which came back as a troubled subject in two films which
Luchino Visconti shot when the second world war memory was still
vivid: Senso (1954) and Il Gattopardo (1963). In Senso, Verdi’s music
is a sound icon of sentimental and patriotic emphasis which dissolves
into Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony anxious and decadent themes. In Il
Gattopardo, Verdi’ operas quotations become part of the Nino Rota’s
soundtrack and are played three times with different results.