From the Screen to the Stage

Harry Potter's done it. So have the Geico cavemen and the Incredible Hulk. The crossing of a story from one medium to another is the current obsession of the western media. However, movie and TV producers aren't the only ones borrowing from another medium. More and more modern composers have taken their libretti from the stories already made popular by film.

This season, Glimmerglass Opera is presenting the genre-jumping opera Orphée by modern composer Philip Glass. The opera is based from Jean Cocteau's 1950 film by the same name. From 1993-1996 Glass wrote an entire opera trilogy based on the films of Jean Cocteau: Orphée, La belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast), and Les enfants terribles (The Terrible Children). Each opera shows a closer merge between the genres. Glass composed Orphée by using Cocteau's screenplay as his libretto. Glass meant La belle et la bête to be performed as an concert opera, with the film without sound playing simultaneously in the background.
However innovative Glass' operas are, he is not the first or last composer to use a film as inspiration for an opera.

• What Next? (1999) by Elliot Carter based on Jacques Tati's Traffic (1970)
• A Wedding (2004) by William Bolcom, based on the Robert Altman film (1978) by the same name
• Lost Highway (2007) by Olga Neuwirth, based on the David Lynch film (1997) by the same name, starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette

Upcoming:

• Dancing in the Dark by Poul Ruders, based on Lars Von Trier's award-winning film (2000) by the same name, which featured Bjork
• The Fly by Howard Shore (Oscar-winning composer of Lord of the Rings) based on the David Cronenberg film (1986) by the same name which featured Jeff Goldblum. Placido Domingo will music-direct the production.

Composers are using films as inspiration for opera more and more, but currently it's far more common for novels to cross into operas. It's been happening for centuries.

• Wagner--Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Rienzi, Last of the Tribunes
• Tchaikovosky--Pushkin's Eugene Onegin
• Richard Strauss--Wilde's Salome
• Korngold--Die Tote Stadt after Rodenbach's Bruges la morte
• Prokofiev- Tolstoy's War and Peace
• Britten--Henry James' The Turn of the Screw
• John Harbison--Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
• Mark Adamo--Alcott's Little Women
• Poul Ruders-- Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, Kafka's The Trial
• Tobias Picker--An American Tragedy

However, many of these stories are best known by their classic film adaptations:

• Carlisle Floyd--Of Mice and Men (1970)
• André Previn--A Streetcar Named Desire (1998)
• Nicholas Maw- Sophie's Choice (2002)
• Jake Heggie--The End of the Affair (2004), Dead Man Walking (2000)
• Ricky Ian Gordon--The Grapes of Wrath (Feb. 2007)

Images courtesy of NYPL Digital Gallery.

Hot Links:
Cronenberg's The Fly to transform into an opera--CBC.ca
Opera to retell classic tale of love and insecticide-The Sydney Morning Herald
New Opera to Be Based on Von Trier Film--AP
Lost Highway, Opera Based on David Lynch Film, Gets New York Premiere--Playbill Arts
Opera and Film: Can This Union Be Saved?--Washington Post
Opera by the Book--Village Voice
The Novel of the Opera--Norman Lebrecht