During the last decade scholars have paid increasing attention to how traditional aesthetic values associated with opera are deconstructed in contemporary digital cinema (Kramer 2013, Citron 2011). Instead of manifested as a work of art underwriting a unified aesthetic experience, opera is employed to create atmosphere and is thereby ascribed a primarily semiotic value. Nonetheless, recent films display an intriguing complexity when it comes to contemporary ideas of opera. This paper focuses on how the utopian ideals historically associated with opera are negotiated in contemporary cinematic representations. Discussing some central scenes from recent films I argue that operatic music is displayed very much in line with contemporary marketing strategies of popular music, and that they are so in a way that both promotes an operatic ontology and creates critical distance to values and beliefs traditionally associated with opera as high art.