Who is the Opera Singer in the Film Fifth Element?

The Real Opera Singer in the Film “The Fifth Element”.

An internationally acclaimed opera singer, Inva Mula-Tchako gave voice support to the Diva in the movie The Fifth Element. Born in Tirana, Albania in 1963 Inva is a soprano and learned singing and piano in her native city. The “Singer of Albania” prize which she won in 1987 was her stepping stone to her golden career. This was followed by the prizes at the George Enescu competition in Bucharest in september 1991, The Grand Prix Madama Butterfly in Barcelona in May 1992 and the Concours Internationale de Voix d’Opera Placido Domingo in Paris in May 1993.

Inve Mula-Tchako has travelled practically all over the world performing, covering countries like the United States, Italy, France, Japan, Austria, Norway, Spain, South Korea and Turkey. Her repertoire includes  Gilda in Rigoletto, Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Violetta in La Traviata, Mimi in La Boheme  and Leila in Les Pecheurs de Perles.

Inva Mula is perhaps better known to film goers as the singer behind Diva Plavalaguna who plays the tall, blue alien performer in the film The Fifth Element. In that movie she performed an aria  from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (the mad scene), and “The Diva dance” song. Behind the scenes the story goes like this. Director Luc Besson who really admired Maria Callas was bent on using her song. Unfortunately her 1950s EMI Classics recording of “Lucia” wasn’t clear enough. Then Callas’s agent Michel Glotz who had produced this recording introduced him Inva Mula who had just recorded Puccini’s La Rondine for EMI Classics.

If you listen to these songs you may think it is impossible to do such vocalisation, but the movies Special Edition Documentary claims that her voice was not digitally altered. However, it was definitely edited in “The Diva Dance” song at  1 min. 06 sec. from the start. A wind instrument can distinctly be heard overdubbing her voice.

The music in this movie has a very dramatic effect. During Plavalguna’s performance the vocalisation and music shifts from classic to pop to match with Leeloo’s fight with the mangalores in Plavalguna’s chamber. The fight choreography is very skilfully set to the music.  In this sequence, the music is both diegetic and extra-diegetic, as the music is audible to the characters in the theater and is at the same time the dramatic score for the fight scene creating a very unusual cinematic effect.

While Inva Mula has given voice support to the Diva in the movie, the role of Plavalaguna was played by French actress Maiwenn Le Besco.  Both songs “Lucia di Lammermoor”  which is Part I and the The Diva Dance song which is part II are included as separate sound tracks on The Fifth Element, but are sequenced to create the effect of the entire performance as seen in the film. Part I and Part II has been blended so well creating a smooth transition between the two tracks.

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