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Monday, April 3, 2023

Shawshank Redemption 🎞️ Opera Scene ♫

The Shawshank Redemption
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«Canzonetta sull'aria»
Mozart's
«Marriage of Figaro»
Performed by Edith Mathis, Gundula Janowitz
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm
A central scene in the film features the Duet "Letter Duet" "Canzonetta sull'aria" from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, also known in Italian as "Sull'aria...che soave zeffiretto." 
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Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) remarks in his voice-over narration:
«I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know.   Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free»
Sull'aria... Che soave zeffiretto...
Zeffiretto... Questa sera spirerà...
Questa sera spirerà...
Sotto i pini del boschettoSotto i pini...
Sotto i pini del boschetto.
Sotto i pini del boschetto.
Ei già il resto capirà.
Certo, certo il capirà.

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In this scene from Mozart's opera the Countess was left alone and she ponders over the loss of her happiness. Susanna enters and updates her regarding the plan to trap the Count. The Countess dictates a love letter for Susanna to send to the Count, which suggests that he meet her that night, "under the pines". 

In this duet, the Countess dictates the title and the three lines of the letter and, after a pause, Susanna repeats the lines as she writes them. In the later part of this duet, the Countess and Susanna read alternate lines with a slight overlap (bars 38–45) until they finish in a true duet with their conclusion. Without repetitions, the contents of the letter is: 
"A little song on the breeze (the title), what a gentle little Zephyr, this evening will sigh, under the pines in the little grove,"... and both conclude with the last line, "and the rest he'll understand."
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A LIVE concert celebrating the Fondation Royaumont's 50th anniversary..
"Les 50 ans de la Fondation Royaumont". 
Natalie Dessay & Karine Deshayes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Le Nozze di Figaro

Act III - "Canzonetta sull'aria"

Duetto: "Sull'aria...che Soave Zeffiretto" 

Susanna: Natalie Dessay
La Contessa di Almaviva: Karine Deshayes
"Sull'aria...che soave zeffiretto" (lit. "On the breeze...What a gentle little Zephyr) a short duet
In the duettino, Countess Almaviva (a soprano) dictates to Susanna (also a soprano) the invitation to a tryst addressed to the countess' husband in a plot to expose his infidelity. 

In the film The Shawshank Redemption, prisoner Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) defies Warden Sam Norton (Bob Gunton) by playing the duettino over the prison's loudspeakers. 

This is ironic as the opera characters are singing about a duplicitous love letter to expose infidelity, and Dufresne's wife's affair is the event which indirectly leads to his imprisonment.

The duettino's appearance in the Shawshank Redemption soundtrack earned it a nomination as one of 400 songs in consideration for American Film Institute's list of 100 top movie songs, although it did not win a place on the list.

The piece also appears on the soundtrack of Joel and Ethan Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There and is also featured in I Love You Phillip Morris.
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Contessa  / Susanna
Gianna Rolandi / Dame Felicity Lott

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, and based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

The film tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, contraband smuggler Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), and becomes instrumental in a money laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). The film also stars William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore.

While The Shawshank Redemption received positive reviews at release, it was a box office disappointment, owing to competition from other films such as Pulp Fiction. The film received multiple award nominations (including seven Oscar nominations) and highly positive reviews from critics for its acting, story, and realism.
Through Ted Turner's acquisition of Castle Rock Entertainment, the film started gaining more popularity in 1997 after it started near-daily airings on Turner's TNT network. The film is now considered to be one of the greatest films of the 1990s. It has since been successful on cable television, VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray.
The film was included in the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition). In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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The Shawshank Redemption
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