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...
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.
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.
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.
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...
