Opera, war and destruction

When Friday night came round, there I was at Berkeley’s with my popcorn and a few token friends to enjoy a bit of a Keira purv over Verbinski’s new pirates flick. While I cannot recommend the film, it did make me think of the relation between opera and war on screen.
In the final moments of the film there is a scene where Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) walks down the stairs of his ship as it is shot apart around him in an acknowledgment of his final defeat. This is played out in slow motion with pieces of wood flying about him to an operatic score, giving it an emotional and awe inspiring impression. While the scene was undeniably corny and cliché, I was left wondering why this was the case.
This is not the first time an operatic score has been used to accompany a scene of warfare and destruction, other examples including The Lord of the Rings and Saving Private Ryan immediately coming to mind. Within TLOTR: The Return of the King, this takes place when Faramir charges the defenses on the river he had recently retreated from and in the final moments of Saving Private Ryan when Captain Miller is dying.
Why use opera?
Opera is an incredibly dramatic form of art which lends itself to the extreme of pain and suffering which is war. It is never relaxed or nihilistic, being relatively extreme in nature, always straining its performers to the utmost edges of their vocal ranges.
It is able to elicit extreme emotion from its listener, heightening the intensity and ghastliness of a story of death and destruction. This use of opera effectively removes an audience from within the narrative, forcing them to step back and see the horror and scale of destruction taking place. In this way it tries to shock the audience, to force them into an almost anti-war stance in a way no other genre of music would find possible.
At the same time this combination is in a sense working against what has just been argued, connoting ideas of the nobility and immortality of the characters actions on screen. In this manner it is glorifying warfare and exalting the concept of giving ones life for a cause, the operatic music becoming a form of a requiem for the dead.
Both opera and warfare poses incredible histories with mankind, yet, are completely different in nature. In merging them together within a film, the epitome of culture and depths of human degradation and despair are brought into contrast with one another. Through this clash of culture and violence, of something pure and something acknowledged to be dark and filthy, the western viewer is in a sense polluted as well. Audiences are both haunted and touched by the conflicting emotions they experience, leading some of them to act upon those ideas and issues this combination has forced them to consider, such as the evil and pointless nature of war.