Exploring Operafilm: Making The Bardo Trilogy

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 "aute...