# My reading project: Books and plays adapted into operas



## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Having just finished Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-morte, the source material for Die Tote stadt, and currently enjoying, Dumas fils’s La Dame aux Camélias, I’ve decided to embark on a reading project of source material for operas. Some I’ve read before and will be re-reading, some will be new to me. This is my list so far, with the proviso that I’m going to give all the all the Walter Scott novels a miss. I enjoyed Ivanhoe in the day, but I’ve never managed to get anywhere with the others.

Beaumarchais: Le barbier de Séville ou la précaution inutile; La Folle Journée ou le Mariage de Figaro; L'autre Tartuffe, ou La mère coupable (The latter to see for myself what happens with the countess and Cherubino)

Belasco: the Girl of the golden west (La Fanciulla del west)

Crabbe: Peter Grimes from “the Borough”

Dostoyevsky: The gambler

Goethe: Faust, The sorrows of the young Werther

Gozzi: Turandot, L'amore delle tre melarance (e-book?)

Gutiérrez: El trovador, Simón Bocanegra (if I can find the e-books in English, or even at all)

Hugo: Le Roil s’amuse (Rigoletto); Hernani (Ernani)

James: The Turn of the Screw

Mann: Death in Venice

Melville: Billy Budd

Mérimée: Carmen

Schiller: Don Carlos; Die Jungfrau von Orleans/The Maid of Orleans (Giovanna D’Arco); Die Rauber/The robbers (I Masnadieri); Mary Stuart (Maria Stuarda); Wilhelm Tell (Guglielmo Tell), Turandot

Shakespeare: Othello; The Merry wives of Windsor (Falstaff); Hamlet; A Midsummer Night’s dream; the Tempest; Macbeth; Much Ado About Nothing (Béatrice et Bénédict)

Prévost: Manon Lescaut

Pushkin: The queen of spades; Eugene Onegin; Boris Godunov

Tolstoy: War and Peace

Virgil: The Aeneid (Les Troyens)

Please feel free to add to the list, make recommendations (links are always welcome), share your reading history and so on.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

I have García Gutiérrez's El Trovador, but in the original Spanish (it's a verse play). You could kill two or three birds with a stone by reading Ludovico Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_, as several of the librettos that Handel set to music are cribbed from that long poem.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Maybe some Maeterlinck would also be a nice reading.

Of course _Pelléas and Mélisande_ is his more famous play in the world of opera, due to Debussy's adaptation (both Gabriel Fauré and Jean Sibelius composed also incidental music for the play, and Arnold Schoenberg wrote a tone poem). But there is _Ariane et Barbe-bleue_, too, adapted by Paul Dukas. Other, more obscure works, are _Monna Vanna_ or _L'oiseau bleu_.

However, the more poignant story is that of _La princesse Maleine_. French composers like Debussy himself, Vincent d'Indy, Erik Satie and the ill-fated Lili Boulanger were working on its adaptation. Boulanger spent most of the last years of her life trying to complete the opera, before her death at 24 years old. This is a beautiful and sad story. Anyone interested can read the article published by Annegret Fauser in 1997: "Lili Boulanger's La Princesse Maleine: A Composer and her Heroine as Literary Icons".


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

I think you should re-consider with Sir Walter Scott and The Bride of Lammermoor. I found it a brisk and entertaining read, at least in the translation I tried (which is whatever the free version is from the Kindle store)

Gottfried von Strassburg - Tristan
And of course there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Also Oscar Wilde's _Salomé_. He wrote it in French for the first production in 1891 and then translated it into English himself.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Remaining on the Richard Strauss wavelength, you might want to consult Greek Tragedy for Elektra and Ariadne Auf Naxos (Euripides?). I'm not sure which if any version Strauss's librettist consulted for Elektra: Sophocles' or Euripides'? Or maybe even Aeschylus' Choephorae (The Libation Bearers)? I read all of them in my wasted youth.

Greek tragedy is a trove: Oedipus (Stravinsky) and a lot of opera seria, particularly Gluck.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Do get the Schiller plays, all of them. Verdi doesn't give you a glimpse of what's really there, so it won't be like "ah yes, I remember this from opera!" all through. His plays are great literature, Verdi's librettos based on them range from low-brow mess (_I Masnadieri_) to something still far from original's quality (_Don Carlo_). Donizetti's _Maria_ isn't that much of profanation, but still differs greatly. You can find out that Leicester is combination of two characters from the play, one of which (Mortimer) was way more interesting dramatic persona than this conventional hybride from libretto. You shouldn't forget the _Luisa Miller_ play, don't remember English title - it's _Kabale und Liebe_ in German.

Expand your Dostoyevsky list? _From the House of the Dead_, made into opera by Janacek?

Regarding Walter Scott, you refuse to read the novels - remember that _La Donna del Lago_ is based on his poem, not novel. So you might want to consider reading it.

Have some Byron? There's _Il Corsaro_. Major omission on the list is Giovanni Verga's short story that served as source for Mascagni's hit opera. Or Torquato Tasso. You like baroque, so why isn't he on the list? And it's not only baroque, there's _Tancredi_ too, for example.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

And everyone seems to have forgotten another major one: Murger, for both Puccini's and Leoncavallo's Boheme(s).


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

In college I studied Bernard Pomerance's play _The Elephant Man_, which was one of the sources for the fairly recent French opera of the same name. Actually, anything about Joseph Merrick, "the Elephant Man," might be considered source material for the opera -- including the 1981 movie, which has always been a favorite of mine, even though many people find it too disturbing or upsetting to watch.

Also, _A View from the Bridge_ by Arthur Miller was made into an opera. It's a great, great play; in my opinion, the opera, though good, doesn't come up to its level on the whole.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

I'd say give Eugene Onegin a miss, go for Pushkin's the Captain's Daughter instead. Maybe it was the translation I had, but I thought EO was just a mess. The Captain's Daughter just sparkled.


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## Notung (Jun 12, 2013)

Tell us how the source material compares with the operas! Some of those books an plays (Beaumarchais, and, of course, Tolstoy) have reputations for being stand-alone classics in their own right. Very interested to find out if this is true.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Mozart's _Mitridate_ is based on Racine's play of the same name, Gounod's _Mireille_ on Mistral's eponymous poem. Aside from _Ariodante, Alcina and Orlando_, it's also Haydn's _Orlando Paladino_, Mayr's _Ginevra di Scozia_ and Vivaldi's, duh, _Orlando furioso_ that are based on Orlando furioso (there's more but I'll stop - it's a good book, I recommend it - the bit with Alcina is rather racy and there are many feats of arms by both men and women knights), _Rinaldo_ - on Tasso's Jerusalem delivered. Rossini's _Tancred_i is based on Voltaire's play of the same name.


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## manuelnobre (Aug 2, 2013)

Maybe you could read (some of) the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann! they must be fun to read.

and what about "The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest" ("_El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra_") by Tirso de Molina? it's one of the earliest versions of the Don Juan story but i'm not sure if it was a source for Da Ponte... it's probably a very interesting play even if it wasn't!


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Massenet's Le Cid was based on Corneille's play from the same name (which is basically an adaptation and translation from the Spanish of Guillén de Castro's _Las Mocedades del Cid_).

Bellinilover, another opera based on a classic American play is, of course, A Streetcar Named Desire. I think there's also an opera based on Wilder's _Our Town_.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

btw, off your list I read the Beaumarchais plays (not the third one, seems to be hard to come by), which were both funny and the libretti are pretty close to the original, Werther (a good book, if you're a romantic at heart  otherwise it will annoy you to no end), Faust (eh), Schiller's plays (eh, I really don't like the ethos; more over the top-ness; you have to read them in your Che Guevara phase, otherwise they lose the appeal; but Mary Stuart ain't bad), Le Roi s'amuse (good but I read it when I was a kid, so maybe I missed a lot), War and Peace (I struggled with it, started it 3 times, finished it by way of audio book - good but a bit much and the characters are a bunch of idiots aside from the Bolkonskys who are cool).


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

manuelnobre said:


> Maybe you could read (some of) the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann! they must be fun to read.
> 
> and what about "The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest" ("_El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra_") by Tirso de Molina? it's one of the earliest versions of the Don Juan story but i'm not sure if it was a source for Da Ponte... it's probably a very interesting play even if it wasn't!


Da Ponte may have relied more (or completely) on the Moliere and Goldoni versions than on the original Burlador by Tirso de Molina (who was in reality a friar named Gabriel Tellez).


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

And of course all the Francescas di Riminis come from the same canto in Dante's Inferno.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

manuelnobre said:


> Maybe you could read (some of) the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann! they must be fun to read.
> 
> and what about "The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest" ("_El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra_") by Tirso de Molina? it's one of the earliest versions of the Don Juan story but i'm not sure if it was a source for Da Ponte... it's probably a very interesting play even if it wasn't!


I read one or two of those Hoffmann tales in a graduate-level literature course. The one from which I think Offenbach and his librettist got the idea for the "Coppelius and the eyes" episode was particularly bizarre, even more so than in the opera.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

rgz said:


> I think you should re-consider with Sir Walter Scott and The Bride of Lammermoor. I found it a brisk and entertaining read, at least in the translation I tried (which is whatever the free version is)]


OK, I still have it on my e-reader, I'll give it another whirl. Any other operatic Scott novels that you can definitely recommend (as well as Aramis's suggestion for the poem The Lady of the Lake)?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Revenant said:


> Also Oscar Wilde's _Salomé_. He wrote it in French for the first production in 1891 and then translated it into English himself.


Great, the French version is on Project Gutemberg. Don't you admire people like Wilde, Nabokov and Conrad who can write literature in a language that is not their mother tongue?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Revenant said:


> I'm not sure which if any version Strauss's librettist consulted for Elektra: Sophocles' or Euripides'?


Wiki says that Elektra was based on Hofmannsthal's play of the same name, so there is definitely at least one degree of separation there. Can't find the play on Gutemberg, but I reckon at that stage you might as well just read the libretto.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

guythegreg said:


> I'd say give Eugene Onegin a miss, go for Pushkin's the Captain's Daughter instead. Maybe it was the translation I had, but I thought EO was just a mess. The Captain's Daughter just sparkled.


Oh, I quite enjoyed EO. Although I was taken aback at how cynical it was, and how much it was concerned with society rather than the intimate story, compared with the romanticism of the opera. But I want to give it another go now that I know a bit better what to expect. I believe that Queen of Spades is also a lot more cynical than the opera.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Eugene O'Neill's _The Emperor Jones _was made into an opera in the early 1930s. Lawrence Tibbett created the role onstage. Paul Robeson created the role in the original play but I don't know if he ever sang the opera version. Probably would be perceived as too "politically incorrect" (they never say according to whose politics and why they're telling us what to think) for a modern revival afaik. But a George London recording of "Standing in the need of prayer" is heartrending.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

deggial said:


> War and Peace (I struggled with it, started it 3 times, finished it by way of audio book - good but a bit much and the characters are a bunch of idiots aside from the *Bolkonskys who are cool*).


Prince Andrei is one of my major literary loves, along with Mr Rochester from _Jane Eyre_, John Thornton From _North and South_, and Captain Wentworth from _Persuasion_.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Thanks for so many wonderful contributions, keep 'em coming!

Updated list so far, almost all of which I have found on Project Gutenberg: 

Ariosto: Orlando furioso (Ariodante, Alcina ,Orlando, Orlando Paladino, etc)

Beaumarchais: Le barbier de Séville ou la précaution inutile; La Folle Journée ou le Mariage de Figaro; L'autre Tartuffe, ou La mère coupable (The latter to see for myself what happens with the countess and Cherubino)

Belasco: the Girl of the golden west (La Fanciulla del west)

Bouilly: Léonore, ou l'amour conjugal (Fidelio)

Byron: The corsair (Il corsaro)

Corneille: Le Cid

Crabbe: Peter Grimes from “the Borough”

Dostoyevsky: The gambler; The house of the dead

Dumas fils: La Dame aux Camélias (La Traviata)

Goethe: Faust: The sorrows of the young Werther

Gozzi: Turandot, L'amore delle tre melarance 

Gutiérrez: El trovador, Simón Bocanegra 

Hoffmann: Tales

Hugo: Le Roil s’amuse (Rigoletto); Hernani (Ernani)

James: The Turn of the Screw

Maeterlinck: Pelléas et Mélisande, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue

Mann: Death in Venice

Melville: Billy Budd

Mérimée: Carmen

Molière: Dom Juan (Don Giovanni), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Lully), Le Malade imaginaire (Charpentier)

Murger: Scènes de la vie de bohème (La bohème)

Prévost: Manon Lescaut

Pushkin: The queen of spades; Eugene Onegin; Boris Godunov

Racine: Phèdre (Hippolyte et Aricie), Mithridate (Mitridate Re di Ponto)

Rodenbach: Bruges-la-Morte (Die tote Stadt)

Schiller: Don Carlos; Die Jungfrau von Orleans/The Maid of Orleans (Giovanna D’Arco); Die Rauber/The robbers (I Masnadieri); , Kabale und Liebe (Luisa Miller) Mary Stuart (Maria Stuarda); Wilhelm Tell (Guglielmo Tell), Turandot

Shakespeare: Othello; The Merry wives of Windsor (Falstaff); Hamlet; A Midsummer Night’s dream; the Tempest; Macbeth; Much Ado About Nothing (Béatrice et Bénédict)

Scott: The Bride of Lammermoor, the Lady of the Lake

Tasso: Gerusalemme liberata/Jerusalem delivered (Rinaldo, Armida, Armide etc)

Tolstoy: War and Peace

Verga: Cavalleria Rusticana

Virgil: The Aeneid (Les Troyens)

Voltaire: Tancrède (Tancredi)

Wilde: Salomé


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Also Eugene Scribe for Tosca. Iirc it was theatrical producer David Belasco himself who adapted as a play the short story on which Madama Butterfly was based, but I'm not sure of this.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> OK, I still have it on my e-reader, I'll give it another whirl. Any other operatic Scott novels that you can definitely recommend (as well as Aramis's suggestion for the poem The Lady of the Lake)?


That's the only Scott I've read; rather shameful, considering he's supposedly my great-great-umpty-great-uncle. Heck, the only other writing of his I know of is Ivanhoe and I don't know of an Ivanhoe opera.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Revenant said:


> Also Eugene Scribe for Tosca.


I think it might be Sardou...

The pointer to Scribe was useful, because he DID write La Muette de Portici and Le comte Ory.



> it was theatrical producer David Belasco himself who adapted as a play the short story on which Madama Butterfly was based, but I'm not sure of this.


Yes Belasco wrote a short play, based on John Luther Long's Madame Butterfly, in turn partly based on Madame Chrysanthème by Loti. The latter is on Gutenberg.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

rgz said:


> That's the only Scott I've read; rather shameful, considering he's supposedly my *great-great-umpty-great-uncle.* Heck, the only other writing of his I know of is Ivanhoe and I don't know of an Ivanhoe opera.


How cool! Better get reading, Ivanhoe is fun.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> How cool! Better get reading, Ivanhoe is fun.


So many books, so little time  I'll add it to the URP!


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

About Walter Scott, and apart from "The Lady of the Lake", "The Bride of Lammermoor" and "Ivanhoe"_, _of which there are quite a few adaptations: Rossini (a pastiche), Pacini, Thomas Sari, Bartolomeo Pisani (_Rebeca_), Castagnier (_Rebecca_), Otto Nicolai (_Il Templario_), Heinrich Marschner (_Der Templer und die Jüdin_) and Arthur Sullivan's _Ivanhoe_, some of them quite interesting, there are several other readings, for instance:

"Guy Mannering", was the main inspiration behind the libretto written by Eugène Scribe for François-Adrien Boieldieu's _La Dame Blanche_. Bellini's _I Puritani_ was also inspired by "Old Mortality". From "Kenilworth" we got Donizetti's _Il castello di Kenilworth_ and Auber's _Leicester_. Bizet adapted "The Fair Maid of Perth"....


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

rgz said:


> So many books, so little time  I'll add it to *the URP*!


:lol:

Yet another pile!


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> Having just finished Rodenbach's Bruges-la-morte, the source material for Die Tote stadt, and currently enjoying, Dumas fils's La Dame aux Camélias, I've decided to embark on a reading project of source material for operas. Some I've read before and will be re-reading, some will be new to me ...


:tiphat:

Thanks Nat, great idea & project. I've already uploaded The Gambler to my e-reader.

One to add?

Massenet Don Quichotte - Loosely based on Cervantes: The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

also "Le chevalier de la longue figure" a play by Jacques Le Lorrain


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

I've read Scott's _The Bride of Lammermoor _and enjoyed it very much -- but then, I like all of Scott's novels. I've also read (in translation) Dumas fils' _La Dame aux Camelias _and Goethe's _Die Leiden des jungen Werthers_. Goethe's Werther is about as insufferable as Massenet's with all his lovelorn mooning around.

Since you're reading opera source materials, what about a translation of the Norse _Volsungasaga_ or the German _Nibelungenlied_? I've read fragments from both, and they're quite different than Wagner's hybrid version of the two.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

mamascarlatti said:


> keep 'em coming!


What do you mean keep them coming, it will be an achievement if you will make it with what you got already within a year.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

MAuer said:


> Goethe's Werther is about as insufferable as Massenet's with all his lovelorn mooning around.


Very wrong to compare these to it is. Massenet's libretto follows the worst tradition of "nice story, let's have it that some guy loves some lady and then somebody dies... all the rest, even if essential to understand who is some guy and some lady and why somebody dies, doesn't interest us".

So the Werther opera is insufferable with all it's blankness, the Goethe thing is widely hated but it's far more than "lovelorn mooning around". If there is chance to symphatize with operatic Werther, it's by connecting him with what's not in the opera but what one can read in the book.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

mamascarlatti said:


> I think it might be Sardou...
> 
> The pointer to Scribe was useful, because he DID write La Muette de Portici and Le comte Ory.
> 
> Yes Belasco wrote a short play, based on John Luther Long's Madame Butterfly, in turn partly based on Madame Chrysanthème by Loti. The latter is on Gutenberg.


Oops! Victorien Sardou of course! Having more and more of these senior moments. Can the indignant wrath of the Grimm Musketeer be long in claiming me now?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Aramis said:


> What do you mean keep them coming, it will be an achievement if you will make it with what you got already within a year.


Ha, you are absolutely right, but I'm finding this conversation interesting, and I like lists.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

sospiro said:


> :
> Massenet Don Quichotte - Loosely based on Cervantes: The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha
> 
> also "Le chevalier de la longue figure" a play by Jacques Le Lorrain


I was kind of hoping no-one would say that one... I'm not sure if I can face it!


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

You should pick Gogol's _Nose_ instead, much easier to face and doesn't run as long as Cervantes. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238/36238-h/36238-h.htm#Page_67


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

quack said:


> You should pick Gogol's _Nose_ instead, much easier to face and doesn't run as long as Cervantes. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238/36238-h/36238-h.htm#Page_67


Oh yes, that one looks a lot of fun!


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

The Bible - Moses und Aron


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

Hm and thinking about it, there's really a surprising lack of Jesus based operas, given how he was sorta influential and all. Maybe it was considered heretical? But I mean, that's gotta be a dream role for any tenor. (Judas would be a baritone of course, and Mary Magdalene a coloratura soprano I think.)


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

rgz said:


> Mary Magdalene a coloratura soprano I think.)


Already got that role planned out for Diana D, I see.


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## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> Already got that role planned out for Diana D, I see.


Only because my first choice is on "hiatus"


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

rgz said:


> Maybe it was considered heretical?


One thing. The other is that it's simply not a good subject for opera and has been more properly explored in sacred music.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Aramis said:


> One thing. The other is that it's simply not a good subject for opera and has been more properly explored in sacred music.


And there is an opera by Mark Adamo focusing on Mary Magdalene

NYT article on The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Aramis said:


> So the Werther opera is insufferable with all it's blankness, the Goethe thing is widely hated but it's far more than "lovelorn mooning around"


Quite right. He's also constantly rhapsodizing over the beauties of nature, or feeling sorry for himself.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

I've mentioned these on other threads, but both are worthy of repeating:

I've just gotten through Stanley Mitchell's 2008 tranlation of Onegin. I don't know how much was due to Pushkin and how much to Mitchell, but I found it to be a jaunty, engaging, brisk, and just plain fun read. I actually consulted the website below before making my $15 investment. It has an interesting link showing the same single sample stanza from ten different translations:

http://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2009/03/eugene-onegin-in-english-comparing.html

For La Traviata, this book went beyond Dumas and put Marie DuPlessis, the real life inspiration for the character, in historical context. Fascinating person, fascinating read.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Girl-Who-Loved-Camellias/dp/0307270793


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

mamascarlatti said:


> Prince Andrei is one of my major literary loves, along with Mr Rochester from _Jane Eyre_, John Thornton From _North and South_, and Captain Wentworth from _Persuasion_.


the only problem with the Prince Andrei storyline is that silly 2 part death  (well, linked to him falling in love with Natasha, who seems like an airhead). But the women in that book are exasperating, only his sister somewhat redeemed (says something about Tolstoy's attitude towards modesty and women, ha).


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

MAuer said:


> Quite right. He's also constantly rhapsodizing over the beauties of nature, or feeling sorry for himself.


I feel like standing up for our man Werther. I was 14 or so when I first tried to read the book and I laughed him out of the room within two pages. But years later I've come to understand him a bit. I think the issue with him is that he was looking for something to sweep him off his feet, something grand and devastating (he tells the story of that servant who was in love with his mistress, which obviously made a strong impression on him, and probably spurred him to find something similar). If you care to recall the beginning of the book, he was initially a pretty lively chap, very ready for sensations - hence having such a vivid experience of nature around him. Maybe we all forget that he was also very young, and teenagers - or people just out of their teens - exaggerate their emotions. Infatuation can be heady and if you're a dramatic person things can get out of hand.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

MAuer said:


> Quite right. He's also constantly rhapsodizing over the beauties of nature, or feeling sorry for himself.


And talking about society, about literature and AND AND AND AND AND AND

Really, it isn't as oversentimental, one-dimensional book as you suggest, you seem to be following the general stereotyphe about it, ignoring other things which should be transparent to every intelligent person who actually did read the book.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

mamascarlatti said:


> Great, the French version is on Project Gutemberg. Don't you admire people like Wilde, Nabokov and Conrad who can write literature in a language that is not their mother tongue?


And Dinesen................................


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

guythegreg said:


> And Dinesen................................


Speaking of whom, Samuel Barber's _Vanessa_ is said to be 'inspired by' Dinesen's _Seven Gothic Tales_, a worthy read on its own as well and a good enough excuse to add it too the pile.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

This is a great idea! I will certainly add some of these to my queue.

I recently read _The Nose_; it is quite short and enjoyable. I then started on _The Sorrows of Young Werther_ but haven't gotten that far (he's just met Charlotte) and might not have the will to pick it back up.

Georg Büchner's _Woyzeck_ is another option as are Wedekind's Lulu plays (English translations of these are on Gutenberg!)


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Aramis said:


> And talking about society, about literature and AND AND AND AND AND AND
> 
> Really, it isn't as oversentimental, one-dimensional book as you suggest, you seem to be following the general stereotyphe about it, ignoring other things which should be transparent to every intelligent person who actually did read the book.


Well, I guess I'm not a very intelligent person. Thank you for pointing this out to me.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

mountmccabe said:


> [...} Georg Büchner's _Woyzeck_ is another option as are Wedekind's Lulu plays (English translations of these are on Gutenberg!)


This. Also the Werner Herzog film based on the play, with Klaus Kinski. Woyzeck is a simple series of linked scenes that were left unordered and unnumbered in the manuscript left by Büchner when he died at 23. It was not rediscovered and reconstructed until about 50 years later. The manuscript was so illegible than the play's title was originally transcribed as Wozzeck, and this is the title given at the premiere, which Berg attended. The play creates an oxymoronic effect: a powerful feeling of helplessness. Perhaps the first 'modern' play, a forerunner of the Theatre of the Absurd. Wozzeck the opera is a perfect marriage of composer and original source material.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

MAuer said:


> Well, I guess I'm not a very intelligent person.


If that is your conclusion...............................................................

ANYWAY

I BUY YO A MUFFIN, WE FRIENDS AGAIN


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Paul Ruders wrote an opera based on Margaret Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_.

Alexander Zemlinsky wrote an excellent little one-act opera based on Oscar Wilde's _A Florentine Tragedy_'

_Porgy and Bess _ is based on DuBose Heyward's novel _Porgy_.

Isn't the story of Gianni Schicchi found somewhere in Dante's _Divine Comedy_?

There's an opera that premiered in San Francisco this year based on Stephen King's _Dolores Claiborne_.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

waldvogel said:


> Paul Ruders wrote an opera based on Margaret Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_.


That's one off the list. I've read it often enough to know it by heart.

So far I've read

Bruges-la-mortes - a very atmospheric and strange book, with Bruges as important a protagonist as Paul the "hero". In the novel Paul actually does commit murder, so that's the obvious difference, but the aspect that struck me more was the strong religious atmosphere invoked by the author, the bells and processions and very conservative society, which are less obvious in the opera.

La Dame aux camélias - on the whole La Traviata is faithful to the book, except that the Alfredo protagonist doesn't get back in time to see his mistress still alive (he does have her exhumed, though. Don't tell any Regie director about this or there will be zombie Traviatas hitting any number of German theatres in the 2014 season). I found the book a rattling good read and it has certainly added to my appreciation of the opera.

The Nose. Simply hilarious. Loved the absurdity of the Nose getting in and out of carriages.

Now reading la Tosca by Sardou.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

mamascarlatti said:


> on the whole La Traviata is faithful to the book


With the general sequence of following events it is, but I always got the impression that _Traviata_ is very much of a light version and after reading the book, the notion of Verdi going controversial by writting it was all gone. The book is much more dirty, except for the London-based count every single person from heroine's environment is fair-weather kind of friend/exploiter. In the opera you get the caring company, loyally standing in compromised Violetta's defense after Afredo abuses her. "We despise you, you have offended such a noble heart" - what? Unthinkable reaction in the book. And speaking of that scene, many claim that _Traviata_ is Verdi's most chamber, intimate opera. And yet, look how he changed the discrete gesture known only between the two, when he leaves her money after night they spent together to offend her. In opera it's turned into some ridiculous outrage taking place in front of the whole crowd of people, he throws handfuls of banknotes on her and then everybody (old Germont, young Germont and then Violetta) is making excuses and goes on about all private stuff, still in front of the chorus.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

mamascarlatti said:


> Bruges-la-mortes - a very atmospheric and strange book, with Bruges as important a protagonist as Paul the "hero". In the novel Paul actually does commit murder, so that's the obvious difference, but the aspect that struck me more was the strong religious atmosphere invoked by the author, the bells and processions and very conservative society, which are less obvious in the opera.


The bells and processions are indeed very well captured in the "Procession" scene, in my view. The Korngolds used a lot Rodenbach's adaptation to the stage of his own novel, _Le mirage_. It's available online here: 
https://archive.org/stream/lemiragedrameenq00rodeuoft#page/n5/mode/2up


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

schigolch said:


> The bells and processions are indeed very well captured in the "Procession" scene, in my view. The Korngolds used a lot Rodenbach's adaptation to the stage of his own novel, _Le mirage_. It's available online here:
> https://archive.org/stream/lemiragedrameenq00rodeuoft#page/n5/mode/2up


Yes, you certainly get the bells, but the description in the book is so visual, and striking. I'm looking forward to seeing it again now that I've read the book. And thanks for the link.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

schigolch said:


> The bells and processions are indeed very well captured in the "Procession" scene, in my view. The Korngolds used a lot Rodenbach's adaptation to the stage of his own novel, _Le mirage_. It's available online here:
> https://archive.org/stream/lemiragedrameenq00rodeuoft#page/n5/mode/2up


In the middle of reading this play. Interesting that the dead wife Genevieve has a speaking part - good justification for Kaspar Holten using a "ghost" in his Finnish opera production. I though that was very effective actually.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Aramis said:


> And speaking of that scene, many claim that _Traviata_ is Verdi's most chamber, intimate opera.


don't forget, _by Verdi standards_.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

waldvogel said:


> Paul Ruders wrote an opera based on Margaret Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_.


interesting, I like Atwood's wry humour.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Richard Danielpour's _Margaret Garner_, with a libretto by the Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, inspired in his novel "Beloved".


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

schigolch said:


> Richard Danielpour's _Margaret Garner_, with a libretto by the Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, *inspired in his novel *"Beloved".


That's "her novel". Morrison is a woman.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Yes, of course she is. Sorry for the typo.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Revenant said:


> Morrison is a woman.


I would never guess:


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Aramis said:


> I would never guess:


Of course, my mistake. There is only one person with the extremely rare surname Morrison.


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## Amara (Jan 12, 2012)

Currently reading _Manon Lescaut_ by Abbé Prévost.

Also, I was reading _Thérèse Raquin_ by Émile Zola earlier this year, and found out that it actually has two relatively recent operas based on it, one by Michael Finnissy (1993) and another by Tobias Picker (2000).


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Amara said:


> Currently reading _Manon Lescaut_ by Abbé Prévost.


Yes. that's my current opera book too



> Also, I was reading _Thérèse Raquin_ by Émile Zola earlier this year, and found out that it actually has two relatively recent operas based on it, one by Michael Finnissy (1993) and another by Tobias Picker (2000).


Goodness that is meaty opera fare. NOT a barrel of laughs


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

MAuer said:


> Since you're reading opera source materials, what about a translation of the Norse _Volsungasaga_ or the German _Nibelungenlied_? I've read fragments from both, and they're quite different than Wagner's hybrid version of the two.


There is also the Poetic Edda.
Yes there are some differences like the giants are dwarfs and Brynhild is Atles/Attilas sister and other differences but the story is somewhat the same except for the ending.


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