Too bad I can’t just commission these.
Via Sarah of Prima la musica, poi le parole comes an irresistible meme: nominate four currently living, breathing people likely to produce interesting and stageable libretti, and four books which could be re-worked into, again, interesting and stageable libretti. As I commented over at Sarah’s blog, I have a hard time coming up with anything as good as her answers (I love, love, love the idea for turning Christina Rossetti’s "Goblin Market" into an opera), but here’s my effort.
For the four potential librettists:
- Anne Carson. Though I don’t know if she counts for the purposes of this question, because she’s already writing libretti. I heard her read her oratorio, "Lots of Guns," at a reading a couple of years ago (it’s in Decreation, her latest book, along with an opera libretto I haven’t read yet).
- Sarah Waters, who has a wonderful way with the kind of grand, unabashed emotion and multilayered melodrama that nineteenth-century novelists and composers liked to wallow in — hence, I think, her fondness for that time period as a setting — and because Tipping the Velvet demonstrates that she can write one hell of a trouser role.
- Neil Gaiman. Because he’s one of those authors who can do anything they like in any genre they like (I mean, he wrote a Sherlock Holmes story set in H.P. Lovecraft’s universe, for crying out loud!), and because his imagination is the kind that constantly juxtaposes the everyday and the mythic.
- And, finally, I have to steal one of Sarah’s answers and nominate Stephen Fry, because I am a huge fan, and the very thought of him writing a libretto would make me happy.
And for the four books to adapt:
- I want to see an opera based on a Jorge Luis Borges story. Most of them, I suspect, would be unadaptable (I can’t see a libretto coming out of, e.g., "The Aleph" or "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"), but I think it could be done with "The Garden of Forking Paths," an old favorite. It’s got enough of a plot to cross over to the stage without being static, and the central passage — the reading of the labyrinth-novel and Yu Tsun’s sense of the "invisible, intangible swarming" of possible futures — would be fascinating to see translated into words, music, and action. Plus, it’s the only Borges story I can think of off the top of my head that has music in it.
- I was going to nominate Henry James’s The Aspern Papers, another old favorite, but I see it’s already been done before, by a composer I’ve never heard of. I’m still putting it on the list, though.
- John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, which gets my nomination for "Jacobean play most unjustly neglected by composers and librettists." (Also been done, but not nearly enough.) It’s got everything: obsession, murder, corruption in high places, a secret love affair, and over-the-top mad scenes. And the scene with the echo from the Duchess’s grave is just begging to be set to some really eerie music.
- Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Think of the possibilities for the composer to quote the musical idioms of every period between the Elizabethan age and the 20th century. And think of the Orlando/Elizabeth I duets!
Orlando! I knew I’d forgotten something! My favourite novel ever. Sigh. *What* a role for a mezzo.
Tipping the Velvet was on my shortlist too. Great minds, etc..
Oh, yeah, absolutely on Stephen Fry.
I almost put Tipping the Velvet on the list of books to be adapted, but then I couldn’t quite figure how the music-hall parts would work when merged into an opera.
And yes, mezzo Orlando, totally. And I’m thinking Shelmerdine should be a countertenor.
So many Stephen Fry fans in this corner of the web! We should write to him and ask if he’s ever considered writing a libretto.