# What novel/play would make a good opera?



## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

Here's a question for all you opera folks:

There have been a good many new operas in the past 10 years or so.

I'm think of _A Streetcar Named Desire_, _Brief Encounter_, _Three Decembers_, _Dead Man Walking_, _Moby-Dick_, _Little Women_, _Dangerous Liasons_, etc. I'm sure there's more.

What story/play/novel would make a good opera?

I always thought William Inge's play "Come Back, Little Sheba" would make a great opera. There's enough emotional subtext to make for great music and enough dramatic action to make for a worthwhile evening....

Some others?


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## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

James Thurber's "The Thirteen Clocks." There are several scenes in this little fable that could be translated into effectively creepy music.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

The English Patient

One of my favourite books and films, and I think it's because it already feels like an opera. It has such scope for duets, ensembles and solos. The Hannah and Almazy scenes in the abandoned monastery, or when Katherine is injured and waiting in the cave for Almazy to return for her.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Hunchback of Notre Dame.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

The Heart of Darkness


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

I've always thought that _12 Angry Men_ and Clifford Odets' play _Awake and Sing!_ would both make good operas. _12 Angry Men_ would be a one-act opera, of course.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Itullian said:


> Hunchback of Notre Dame.


Sort of a _Phantom of the Cathedral_ thing? :devil:


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The Bedsitting Room by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, maybe? The original play and (later) film - an absurdist post-nuclear war story - was somewhat unfathomable so that in itself might be manna for a collaboration between a modern-thinking director and a composer who is up for a surrealistic challenge.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Any of Flann O'Brien's novels!
The Third Policeman would make a smashing Surrealist Opera as I told Mr Crud in another thread (Trying to persuade him in to writing it)!

/ptr


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

I was much taken by Checkov's 'The Black Monk' when I read it, after discovering Shostakovich was also. 

Shosty thought it would make a good subject for an opera but also thought it would be difficult.
I think it would make for a great psychological dramatic opera.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

MagneticGhost said:


> I was much taken by Checkov's 'The Black Monk' when I read it, after discovering Shostakovich was also.
> 
> Shosty thought it would make a good subject for an opera but also thought it would be difficult.
> I think it would make for a great psychological dramatic opera.


If Shosty could do The Nose I reckon he's up for anything.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Just about any of Theodore Dreiser's novels (_An American Tragedy_ has already served as the basis for an opera).


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## Notung (Jun 12, 2013)

A Theology teacher I know suggested Dante's "Divine Comedy". A three-night "Christian answer" to the Ring.

"Inferno" alone could produce a spectacular opera, let alone the fabled riches of the next two books (which reminds me; I have a certain mountain in my shelf that needs climbing)


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha
Hans Christian Anderson - The Little Mermaid or The Snow Queen
The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor from Arabian Nights
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Ovid - Metamorphosis (Selected stories)
Tolkien - Lord of the Rings (at the risk of critics "Wagner did it first!")
Hesiod - Theogony 
Shakespeare - Any play that hasn't already been adapted
Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

The Aeneid; any part of it, or the whole thing if any composer felt really ambitious.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

And Beowulf would be great!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

A Christmas Carol


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Naked Lunch
Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar
Kolyma Tales
Pale Fire


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Jobis said:


> The Aeneid; any part of it, or the whole thing if any composer felt really ambitious.


4 hours of Les Troyens not enough for you?


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

What would John Adams make of 1984?


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

All the books of the Holy Bible would make great operas.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> All the books of the Holy Bible would make great operas.


I forgot to mention that I always thought Job would make a great opera. Or Genesis (or, if one preferred Milton's Paradise Lost more, they could use that). Exodus would also be a good choice.


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## AClockworkOrange (May 24, 2012)

I would tentatively suggest 'A Clockwork Orange' - predictable given my screen name but I stand by it.

I know Burgess (sadly, not a composer) worked on a musical version but with the right composer I think it could make for an interesting Opera - provided it is the _International version_ of the novel and not the American edition which omits the final chapter. This is my one criticism with the Kubrick's film adaptation.

As a novella it isn't overly long, it has a great deal of depth, black humour and interesting themes running through the narrative that are arguably as relevant if not more so today than when initially published in 1962.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

I was thinking more like the journey to the underworld, the war in Italy etc.

Les Troyens ends at only book four!


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

senza sordino said:


> What would John Adams make of 1984?


Probably a better job than Lorin Maazel.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

senza sordino said:


> What would John Adams make of 1984?


Or _Animal Farm_. Despite potential complications in assigning voice registers to the pigs and chickens. But Boxer the horse _has_ to be a tenor, and Benjamin the donkey a bass.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Jane Austen's *Persuasion* - there are some fine 'emotional moments' when Anne Elliot has to steel herself to meet her former fiancé who now scorns her as worn out; and the fabulous melodrama of Louisa Musgrove falling insensible after leaping from the Cobb - and then the suspense of Captain Wentworth writing a letter while overhearing Anne's comparison of male & female constancy. I think it would be fine!


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Finnegans Wake?

(just kidding, Philip Glass take note!)

A Christmas Carol would be a terrific opera, thanks for the suggestion.
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" would also be powerful, but very scary. And let's not even talk about McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"!

Oh, yeah, howzabout an opera using my mystery novel "Blood Storm"? And naturally, a big payment to the author for rights! ha ha


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Re: an earlier suggestion by Cosmos -- The Irish composer Gerald Barry has written an operatic version of _The Importance of __Being Earnest_.
http://www.roh.org.uk/productions/the-importance-of-being-earnest-by-ramin-gray


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## Gizmo (Mar 28, 2013)

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Arsenic and Old Lace


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## msegers (Oct 17, 2008)

Itullian said:


> Hunchback of Notre Dame.


It has been done -


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

I've always thought Molière's Le malade imaginaire could be a hilarious Rossini-esque comedy. In a way, it has already been partially turned into an opera, as its original version included interludes and ballets by Charpentier.


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## BevSills (Jul 23, 2014)

I think Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?" would make a wonderfully intense Opera. "Martha" already looks like she's finishing up a raucous aria in this photo.


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## msegers (Oct 17, 2008)

It seems that many people in this thread seem to think that the question requires a great work of literature. I remember when a similar question was raised to the panel on an interval of the great old Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and one response was _Gone With the Wind_. The point was made that there is already a quartet - soprano & mezzo, tenor & baritone - built into the novel.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Naked Lunch
> Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar
> Kolyma Tales
> Pale Fire


Enno Poppe's done an interpretation of Naked Lunch (Interzone)- it has its moments! Pale Fire is too perfect to be altered in any way (IMO). I love the idea of some hardboiled/noir operas myself


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Zola's Germinal


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## atmplayspiano (Apr 12, 2014)

Cosmos said:


> The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor from Arabian Nights


Ooh, with music à la Scheherazade!


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## Lovemylute (Jul 17, 2014)

Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Not a novel or a play, but a TV show -- there's an episode of _The Twilight Zone_ called "The Obsolete Man" that I could easily imagine as a one-act opera. In fact, there are other _Zone_ episodes that would probably work as operas, too -- the trouble is that with some of them, the original incidental music (by composers like Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, etc.) is so great that I almost think it would be pointless to try to compete with it.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)




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## Levanda (Feb 3, 2014)

msegers said:


> It has been done -


What are nice surprise deficiently worthy to watch it.


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## mirepoix (Feb 1, 2014)

'Celle qui n'était plus' by Boileau-Narcejac, which was filmed as Les Diaboliques.


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

I think Greek mythology would be interesting :
_Hecuba_ by Euripides
_Oedipus the King_ by Sophocles

An adaptation from _Lorenzaccio_ by Alfred de Musset would for sure be great !

Or _Waiting for Godot_ with a John-Cage-style orchestration...


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

msegers said:


> It has been done -


That opera will be next on my operas to see list.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dgee said:


> Enno Poppe's done an interpretation of Naked Lunch (Interzone)- it has its moments! Pale Fire is too perfect to be altered in any way (IMO). I love the idea of some hardboiled/noir operas myself


I don't know how you'd actually translate Pale Fire into a libretto anyway, though a number of contemporary operas have done quite interesting things with difficult material.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Children of Hurin with some omissions would make a very good opera in Wagnerian style, dark and yet full of magic. Some episodes from The Silmarillion, for example the story of Beren and Lutien, would make a good opera too.


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## Levanda (Feb 3, 2014)

Andrei Rublov I think would be great idea for opera.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

^^^

The Russian name was just enough to prompt a connection via association:

*Oblomov ~ Ivan Goncharov*

To make an opera on a theme which is anti-dramatic, the central character a man who is _''incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant action"_ would be a major challenge for both librettist and composer in holding any audience interest whatsoever <g>

From wiki:
"Oblomov (Russian: Обломов)[1] is a novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is the central character of the novel, portrayed as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature. Oblomov is a young, generous nobleman who seems incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant actions. Throughout the novel he rarely leaves his room or bed and just manages to move from his bed to a chair in the first 50 pages..."

ADD P.s. Never considered a 'great writer or book,' it is still a very good one: of very moderate length for a quick read, I recommend it.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

I'd love to see Shelley's "The Cenci" and "Hellas" turn operatic; Ibsen's "A Doll's House" and "Emperor and Galilean"-- certainly. June Chang's _Wild Swans _and Ayn Rand's_ Atlas Shrugged_-- definately.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Steinbeck - East of Eden


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

-Hemingway's "The Old Man & the Sea."
-John Fowles "The French Lieutenant's Woman."
-James Clavell's "Shogun: A Novel of Japan."
-Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov's "And Quiet Flows the Don" (although Ivan Dzerzhinsky had already written an opera based on it by 1935, and had a successful run in Stalin's Russia (around 200 performances by 1938), it was never recorded and quite forgotten).
-Richard Wright's "Native Son."


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Marschallin Blair said:


> I'd love to see Shelley's "The Cenci"....


Maybe you will be interested in this CD, then:










It was an interesting hearing for me, a quite nice piece. Worth a try, in my view. Granted, you can't *see* the opera, but nobody's perfect...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Revenant said:


> The Heart of Darkness


upon which is based Francis Ford Coppola's film, _Apocalypse Now._


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Bellinilover said:


> Not a novel or a play, but a TV show -- there's an episode of _The Twilight Zone_ called "The Obsolete Man" that I could easily imagine as a one-act opera. In fact, there are other _Zone_ episodes that would probably work as operas, too -- the trouble is that with some of them, the original incidental music (by composers like Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, etc.) is so great that I almost think it would be pointless to try to compete with it.


I know every Twilight Zone episode by heart! Ha! Ha! Television at its zenith!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> I know every Twilight Zone episode by heart! Ha! Ha! Television at its zenith!


_...but of course, you refer to the Original series, (1959-1964)_


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

I think there's a need for a Science Fiction opera. I would suggest Stanislaw Lem's Solaris or William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's Logans Run.


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## JustinSlick (Aug 19, 2013)

Badinerie said:


> I think there's a need for a Science Fiction opera. I would suggest Stanislaw Lem's Solaris or William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's Logans Run.


Solaris would be really, really interesting. I think _Dune_ would be pretty cool too. Or _Anathem_... a bunch of monk-scientists chanting about physics, geometry, and the multi-verse sounds immensely appealing 

The Hesiod and Ovid suggestions were also nice.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Badinerie said:


> I think there's a need for a Science Fiction opera. I would suggest Stanislaw Lem's Solaris or William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's Logans Run.


Detlev Glanert has composed on opera based on _Solaris_. Here's an interview on the subject:
http://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Detlev-Glanert-interview-about-new-opera-Solaris/100021

Krzysztof Meyer has also written the sci-fi opera _Cyberiada_, based on Lem's _Cyberiad_:


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Badinerie said:


> I think there's a need for a Science Fiction opera. I would suggest Stanislaw Lem's Solaris or William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's Logans Run.


And an X-Men opera!

The Russian film Burnt by the Sun would make a good opera.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

Gizmo said:


> Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
> 
> Arsenic and Old Lace


Bernard Herrmann's opera is Wuthering Heights.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

omega said:


> I think Greek mythology would be interesting :
> _Hecuba_ by Euripides
> _Oedipus the King_ by Sophocles
> 
> ...


Stravinsky's best opera (and one of his greatest musical achievements) is Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King).


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

senza sordino said:


> What would John Adams make of 1984?


I think he'd have far more fun with _Animal Farm._


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> All the books of the Holy Bible would make great operas.


For us who are ignorant or apostate -- is that both the old and the new testaments?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Torkelburger said:


> Stravinsky's best opera (and one of his greatest musical achievements) is Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King).


To be petty pedant, it is an "Opera / oratorio" -- and truly more oratorio than opera. It is rare to find it ever fully staged, since it has no action, really, but is set as a series of static tableaux.
It is, imo, a superb work, and yet another masterpiece from this composer who wrote many masterpieces.
However..._Oedipus Rex_, brilliantly staged, here





His 'best Opera' would be _A Rake's Progress_


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Romain Rolland's _Jean Christophe,_ an epic ten-volume fictional biography transparently "about Beethoven," -- the author said, "To spell it out, the hero is Beethoven in the modern world."

The immense novel would need one hell of a redacting, and a fine librettist to do that as a basis for the script, but the book is rich in small personal incidents and situations which seem perfectly suited to be transliterated into opera.

http://www.talkclassical.com/31094-what-novel-play-would-4.html


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

H.P. Lovecraft's novella _The Case of Charles Dexter Ward._


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

PetrB said:


> To be petty pedant, it is an "Opera / oratorio" -- and truly more oratorio than opera. It is rare to find it ever fully staged, since it has no action, really, but is set as a series of static tableaux.
> It is, imo, a superb work, and yet another masterpiece from this composer who wrote many masterpieces.
> However..._Oedipus Rex_, brilliantly staged, here
> 
> ...


Have you seen Lenny's analysis of Oedipus in the Norton Lectures? I think it's in the fourth or fifth one. Brilliant. Wish he could have spent a week on the score.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Surely, most of these stories are too involved to be successfully translated to the stage. Any more than a few chapters and it'll get bogged down. Sure, they made an opera about Moby Dick but once you strip away the pages about whale classifactions and the art of making rope; there's really only a three moments of interest. 

1. Meeting Queequeg
2. The whale hunt
3. Moby goes bananas.

There's your 3 acts...someone shove Bryn Terfel in a Moby costume.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

A Streetcar Named Desire has already been done by the Simpsons, with Marge as Blanche. It ends with a heartwarming chorus about how ' you can always rely on the kindness of strangers'! 
It must have been good because the kids were falling about laughing, and they haven't even done Streetcar for A Level yet.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2014)

DRACULA.

I can't believe it hasn't been done.

As for the Bible, of course we have a bit of Exodus (Schoenberg), along with oratorios on Revelation (Schmidt!), countless passions, etc, but I agree that many other potential biblical dramas are there. Ideas:
- Jacob?!
- David and Bathsheba (The eventual murder of Uriah would make a good multi-scene act. Followed by David and Nathan the Prophet, and David's penance)
- Perhaps the book of Ruth?
- Bits of the Acts of the Apostles?
- Breaking away a bit, maybe an avant-garde composer will base a passion/oratorio/opera on one of the gnostic gospels, just for funsies.

I would also second Heart of Darkness, 1984, A Christmas Carol, and perhaps The Road. I'm not nearly as well read as surely most of the people here are. One book that impacted me as an adolescent was A Tale Of Two Cities - I felt an extreme kinship to Sydney Carton when my depression first worsened - I wonder if it could make a decent opera..


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> _...but of course, you refer to the Original series, (1959-1964)_


Yes, of course. The original series! With Rod Serling puffing away on the intros.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> For us who are ignorant or apostate -- is that both the old and the new testaments?


They wrote another one? Oy!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I would go with Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman.


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## Gizmo (Mar 28, 2013)

Another one that comes to mind is Blackmore' s Lorna Doone.


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## marienbad (Aug 10, 2014)

-50 shades of Grey

Bad books have always made great Opera.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

"Notre Dame " by Franz Schmidt ,is an opera which deserves to be better known , and is based on Hugo's famous novel .
I have the superb Capriccio recording with Kurt Moll as the hunchback , and Gwyneth Jones as Esmeralda, conducted by Christof Perick .
Leon Botstein & the American symphony gave a concert performance in NYC not too long ago . The Met ought to do a
production sometime soon .


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I like the Lorna Doone idea. If I was writing the libretto, the opening words would be "Hi Lorna. How ya Doone?"


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Why aren't there more operas set in the wild west? The only one I can think of is Fanciulla. How about an opera version of Evil Roy Slade?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Radames said:


> Why aren't there more opers set in the wild west?


What an opera this would make!

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

KenOC said:


> What an opera this would make!
> 
> "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
> 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2


A pedestrian film. The story itself is compelling though.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> A pedestrian film. The story itself is compelling though.


:lol::lol::lol: "In retrospect, I would rather have had three hours of my life painlessly and instantly excised from my lifespan than have my memories polluted with the remembrance of what is easily one of the most dull and flat-out worst movies I have personally experienced." (from one of the few negative reviews on IMDB)

Maybe Wagner should write the opera?


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

KenOC said:


> What an opera this would make!
> 
> "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
> 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2


Yes, that was a really good film.


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

KenOC said:


> :lol::lol::lol: "In retrospect, I would rather have had three hours of my life painlessly and instantly excised from my lifespan than have my memories polluted with the remembrance of what is easily one of the most dull and flat-out worst movies I have personally experienced." (from one of the few negative reviews on IMDB)
> 
> Maybe Wagner should write the opera?


No - - maybe a Transformers opera. LOL


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Graham Greene's Third Man would be a wonderful opera.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Radames said:


> Why aren't there more operas set in the wild west? The only one I can think of is Fanciulla.


Well, there's The Ballad of Baby Doe composed by Douglas Moore - takes place mainly in Colorado.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I think there are too few contemporary comic operas so I think there should be an opera based on one of Ray Cooneys plays.


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