This is not just a film. Although romanticized, it tells a true story of perhaps the most beautiful and sincere love tragedy in music history. What the film does not say or even touch upon is the fact, that Bellini himself died on the very same day as Maddalena exactly one year later, only 33 years old. The film points out, that all the music Bellini made, was of the sorrowful love of Maddalena, and that is why it is crying all the time. When she was gone he felt he had no reason to go on living himself any more, in spite of the tremendous success of his operas, and died of languishment or his unhappy love, while the doctors never could find any physical reason for his early death. The film tries to communicate his story under the compulsion of the limitations of the movie art and succeeds to some degree: it is made with consistent exquisite beauty, the colours are as wonderful as the costumes and the sceneries, and it is obvious that the director Carmine Gallone set his heart to this work, which he had directed once before in black and white 20 years earlier. Bellini's unique music, although actually rather simplistic with basically only melody and accompaniment, never fails to touch the heart, he was Chopin's favourite composer who could never have enough of his music, even Wagner loved him, and Verdi builds his cathedral of a life's work entirely on the musical foundation of Bellini. It is music of love all through, and so is the film like all Bellini's life, too short and too magnificent in its touch of divinity to be able to outlast the loss of his one great love.
Review of Casta diva
