ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the opera scene in Luc Besson's science-fiction film The Fifth Element and extends Silverman's and Hunter's work by tracing opera's evocation of the maternal voice to the peculiar qualities of the operatic voice, especially in nineteenth-century opera. It focuses on how the opera scene in Besson's film is self-referential in its celebration of the 'body' of the voice, to borrow Rosolato's concept. Drawing on Rosolato's theory that opera is the closest 'terrestrial equivalent' of the 'celestial melody' of the maternal voice. Opera can still function as an unconsummated symbol like textless instrumental music, because in opera the 'body' of the voice à la Rosolato is more prominent than its linguistic dimension: in other words, opera as a geno-song rather than a pheno-song. While in The Shawshank Redemption, the registering of opera as a geno-song happens at only one level within the diegesis of the film, it operates on three levels in 2046.
