Opera 1987

Prima donna Mara Czekova storms out of a dress rehearsal for Verdi’s Macbeth at the Parma Opera House, frustrated by the live ravens and by director Marco, Ian Charleson a figure known for turning genre audiences on edge. When Cecova is suddenly struck by a passing car, the prestigious production must cope with the sudden vacancy in the pivotal role of Lady Macbeth, which falls to her anxious understudy, Betty, Cristina Marsillach. Betty’s nerves are tempered by the reassurance of her agent, Mira, Daria Nicolodi, and by her stage‑manager boyfriend, Stefano, William McNamara. The atmosphere backstage remains tense as a stagehand discovers an intruder watching the opera from a balcony box reserved for crew, a threat that ends violently when the watcher is murdered.

Betty receives a poison‑pen letter from a resentful Cecova, stirring a web of fear and competition beneath the glittering surface. That night, a masked figure slips into the opera house and slashes Betty’s costume, secretly sewing a gold bracelet into the fabric. The intruder is partly thwarted when ravens attack, killing three of the birds, and Betty spends the night with Stefano at his wealthy uncle’s vacant house. Stefano, understanding Betty’s struggle with sexual dysfunction, goes to fetch tea, only to become the target of the same masked killer. The assailant gags Betty, binds her, and tapes needles beneath her eyes, forcing her to witness Stefano’s brutal murder. The killer then gropes Betty, asserting that she is aroused, before loosening her bonds and fleeing. From a payphone, Betty reports the carnage to the police, while Marco drives her home and she recounts a recurring childhood nightmare in which her mother appears bound in a dilapidated room, smiling at her reflection as a woman screams and then falls silent.

Inspector Alan Santini, Urbano Barberini, begins questioning the opera staff while Betty bonds with seamstress Giulia, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni to mend her costume. The killer reappears, constraining Betty once more, and then stabs Giulia, who swallows the bracelet before the killer cuts her throat to retrieve it, releasing Betty only after fleeing. Santini promises to arrange protection through his assistant for Betty, but the situation grows more opaque when Mira arrives with news that another man has claimed to be Soave in the lobby. A tense moment at Betty’s apartment ends with the figure posing as Soave forcing entry, and Mira watching through the peephole as a real threat closes in. The supposed Soave is revealed only after a second, deadly interruption: the intruder shoots Mira in the hallway, and Betty hides as the killer breaches the apartment. She discovers the real, mortally wounded Soave, who had reentered the space only to be stabbed, and she escapes through the ventilation with the help of a neighbor girl.

A nightmare deepens Betty’s resolve as she and Marco discuss a plan to identify the killer during a performance. In Betty’s ongoing visions, she sees her mother bound in that same ruin of a room, and the image of the masked figure returns with greater clarity. During the following night’s performance, Marco unleashes the ravens into the audience, and the birds strike at Santini, gouging out one of his eyes. Santini returns fire, pursuing Betty and abducting her from her dressing room. He reveals a chilling truth: he was obsessed with Betty’s mother, having tortured and murdered young women for her satisfaction, and Betty’s resemblance rekindled his ancient bloodlust. After revealing that he killed Betty’s mother because she refused his sexual advances, Santini blinds and binds Betty, staging a fatal, scripted suicide by setting the room on fire.

Betty and Marco retreat to a secluded house in the Swiss Alps, but a news report soon follows: a mannequin, not Santini, has been burned in the fire, and a manhunt for Santini is underway. Marco discovers his housekeeper has been murdered and shouts for Betty to flee; she escapes, pursued by Santini. In a climactic struggle, Marco tackles Santini but is fatally stabbed, and Betty finally defeats the killer with a decisive blow to the head, leading to his arrest by the police. As the dust settles, Betty proclaims that she is nothing like her mother, even as she wrestles with the shadow of the past. In the final quiet moment, she finds a small symbol of freedom—a lizard freed from a tangle of leaves—signaling a fragile new calm after the storm.

Alma, Francesca Cassola, and Alma’s mother, Carola Stagnaro, are woven into the backstory that haunts the narrative, adding depth to Betty’s fear and resilience, while a chorus of other immune-to-the-foreseeable fates characters—Giulia, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, Maria, Cristina Giachino, and the operatic world itself—frame a tale of art, obsession, and a patient, relentless pursuit of truth in the shadowed corridors of a house built on memory and fear. The film leaves viewers with a cool, uneasy resolve: a woman who has faced the darkest corners of her lineage can still choose to walk forward, symbolized by the small act of letting a creature of the wild go free.