Exploring Operafilm

Operafilm is a new word for an emerging, auteur-led gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, in which music, film, and performance are combined to sustain intellectually and aesthetically coherent metamodernist narratives. In this form of storytelling, every element, including score, image, and performance, is given equal attention.

Daron Hagen is the first to compose, write, storyboard, direct, and edit full-length operafilms, shifting authorship away from screenwriters and towards the "auteur composer-director" that embodies the depth of the genre. Hagen's Bardo Trilogy offers an exploration of operafilm, conjuring the inner life of Orson Welles at his moment of death, a magical-realist last supper with four New Yorkers on the eve of 9/11, and the final days of a composer who sees song and life as a cosmic audition. This book explores the origins of the emerging genre, highlighting Hagen's own process as the single screenwriter, director, and composer of the works discussed.