Adapting a Canonical Canadian Novel for the Operatic Stage: A Dystopia for Our Times

Abstract

A plain, cream-coloured leaflet listed the program for the day-long Opera Exchange symposium at the University of Toronto – ‘The Handmaid’s Tale: No Balm for this Gilead.’ From 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday 2 October 2004, a mixed audience of academics, students, and members of the general public assembled to hear a series of lectures and presentations on Margaret’s Atwood’s chilling futuristic novel turned opera. While the house lights are up and people are taking their seats and reading their programmes a proscenium-arch-filling Video Conference screen displays ... four moving ‘screen-savers’ [the first of which reads] ‘International Historical Association Convention, 20–25 June, 2195, Twelfth Symposium on the Republic of Gilead (Formerly the United States of America).’ (Ruders, xiv)