Kurosawa's use of opera (Opera Wire)

Opera Wire has a couple of interesting recent articles on Kurosawa’s use of operatic music in his films.

Today’s article is titled How Kurosawa Defines Character in ‘One Wonderful Sunday’ Using An Excerpt from Bizet’s ‘Carmen’. It looks at how at the end of the baseball scene, Kurosawa uses a piece of music to emphasise the beginning of a change in Yuzo’s character.

Another article, published earlier this month and titled Akira Kurosawa Pulls Off a Masterstroke With Offenbach’s Barcarole in ‘Stray Dog’, discusses the musical choice at the end of the long montage where Mifune’s Murakami roams around Tokyo looking for a gun dealer.

These made me realise that while Kurosawa’s visual and textual aspects have been quite thoroughly explored by numerous film critics and other commentators, I feel that much more could still be written about his use and choices of music.

Opera Wire has continued its Kurosawa investigations with an article on Rhapsody in August.