His bloody materials: Reasons for adapting Yasuzo Masumura's Red Angel into a tragic opera set in 1990s Sudan

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article proposes an examination of this opera librettist's engagement with Masumura Yasuzo's Red Angel (1966), a violent and tragic love story set during the Sino-Japanese war. Why does Masumura's work provide a structural model for addressing the recent history of suffering and war in sub-Saharan Africa? What are the formal devices from Masumura's theatre background and films that provide the ground for the contemporary librettist developing new aesthetic strategies for addressing the extreme? The article offers an account of the journey to the adaptation; a description of a parallel scene from the film and adaptation; and a speculative discussion of the relationship between Japanese theatre and the film. The article points towards an aesthetic model for the informed ‘reading’ of contemporary events with the split attentiveness of closeness and distance, replacing the emotional immersion or forgetful distancing sometimes induced by mainstream western performance forms and media coverage of extreme events.