Opera Adaptations Research Articles

Karmen Geï and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha: Africana Womanism Meets Mérimée and Bizet in African Cinema

Joseph Gaï Ramaka’s Karmen Geï (Senegal, 2001) and Mark Dornford-May’s U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (South Africa, 2005) restore key aspects present in Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella, Carmen, but omitted from Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera adaptation. By resisting the gendered precepts through which Mérimée sought to underpin his misogynist vision, these African films create not only a fuller portrait of Carmen, but also one that aligns with Africana womanist and Afrofeminist perspectives. Their transcultural revisioning of the Carmen story foregrounds female agency, together with a critique of the systemic violence that undermines it, in a way that contrasts with Western interpretations.

Göstergebilimsel Analiz: Acımak Dizisi Örneği

Cumhuriyet dönemi edebiyatında önemli bir yeri olan Çalıkuşu (1922), Gizli El (1922), Damga (1924), Dudaktan Kalbe (1925), Yeşil Gece (1928), Yaprak Dökümü (1930), Gökyüzü (1935), Eski Hastalık (1938), Ateş Gecesi (1942), Kavak Yelleri (1961) gibi çok sayıda bilinen eseri olan Reşat Nuri Güntekin, Türk roman, öykü ve oyun yazarıdır. Reşat Nuri Güntekin’in eserlerinde aile, aşk, çocuk, yalnızlık, dostluk, fedakârlık ve ahlak vb. bireysel ve toplumsal konuları işleyerek, gelenekselin karşısında yeniyi sunma çabasıyla Cumhuriyet ideolojisini yaymaya çabaladığı görülmüştür. Çalışmada, Reşat Nuri Güntekin’in “Acımak” adlı romanından aynı isim ile televizyona uyarlanan “Acımak” dizisi, göstergebilimsel analiz yöntemiyle çözümlenmeye çalışılmaktadır. Söz konusu dizi, 1985-1986 yılları arasında TRT-1 kanalında yedi bölüm olarak yayımlanan Türk yapımı, dram türünde bir dizidir. Göstergebilimsel analiz yöntemi kullanılarak Acımak dizisindeki sahnelerden alınan görüntüler Barthes’in yan anlam ve düz anlam kavramları ile dil ve anlatım; zaman ve mekân; kıyafet başlıkları altında hem romanın yazıldığı dönem hem de dizinin uyarlandığı dönem özellikleri göz önünde bulundurularak göstergebilim çerçevesinde analiz edilmeye çalışılmıştır.

‘Je n’ai pas envie de chanter ce soir’: A Re-examination of Samuel Beckett’s Opera Collaboration Krapp, ou La Dernière bande

This article re-examines Krapp, ou La Dernière bande (1961), an opera adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), which was a collaboration between the playwright and the Romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici. Beckett’s changes to the libretto give new insights into the writer’s developing concerns around form and his aesthetic of failure. In the programme for the Bielefeld production of the opera in 1961, Beckett supplied a sentence from the German translation of his Texts for Nothing, although inverting its first two clauses. His inclusion of this line in the programme affords us greater insight into Beckett’s ever evolving conception of the play. Shane O’Neill’s doctoral research on Samuel Beckett’s self-translated drama is funded by the Irish Research Council. He teaches at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, and has published essays in Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui and the edited volume Samuel Beckett and Translation (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

Integration, Challenge and Loss: The Localization of Shakespeare's Plays—A Case Study of Contemporary Legendary Theatre "The Revenge of the Prince"

Cross-cultural adaptation is the reproduction of classic works by creators in different periods and regions, which reflects the integration of different cultural demands. In the adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", "The Revenge of the Prince", a Peking Opera produced by Taiwan Contemporary Legend Theatre, has been optimized in terms of means of expression. However, due to the different cultural backgrounds and symbol systems of China and the West, some important characteristics of the original play are weakened in the presentation of conflicts and the portrayal of main characters.Therefore, opera adaptation is not only a simple transplant of the original work, but also an original creation full of innovative challenges.

‘JUST A WORD ON A STAVE AND THERE IS THE OPERA’: THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MUSIC AND LIBRETTO IN PHILIP VENABLES’ 4.48 PSYCHOSIS

AbstractThe success of Philip Venables’ opera adaptation of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis is underpinned by its powerful presentation of the play's text. This is predominantly facilitated by the other musical forces present, rather than through clever text-setting alone. Venables uses an array of timbral techniques, theatrical performance directions, referential sound effects, interactions with literary devices in the text and allusions to other musical genres in the opera to support and supplement his vocal writing. This article argues that the instrumental composition in 4.48 is critical in ensuring comprehension of the libretto and that, because of his working methods, Venables’ adaptation is faithful to Kane's sensitive play.

Peculiarities of Adaptation of the Novel by F.M. Dostoyevsky “The Idiot” in the Opera by M. Weinberg of the Same Name

The article is devoted to the issues of correlation between the literary source and the musical drama. The opera “The Idiot”, finished by the Russian composer Mieczysław Weinberg in 1986 and performed on the leading Russian stages in the creative season of 2016-2017, has become the object of scientific interest. The libretto written by A.V. Medvedev is based on the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky of the same name. Musical studies of Dostoevsky’s works started emerging during the life of the writer. It was expressed in the use of musical terminology in the criticism and scientific studies concerning literary works by F.M. Dostoevsky. In 1916, S.S. Prokofiev created the opera “The Gambler”, which became the first opera adaptation of the writer’s prose, congenial with the literary source. Since then, the creative heritage of the author of “Demons” has repeatedly attracted composers’ attention. Musical adaptations of Dostoevsky’s literary works today comprise more than seventy compositions in various genres. Operas are of particular interest, since dramatic and musical texts are equally important in conveying the implications of the writer’s novels. The specific features of the interaction of prose and musical drama in this article are revealed using the intertextual analysis methods, which highlight the relevance of the topic addressed. The libretto is studied as an important component of the opera in the light of the trends of the modern science of music. The techniques of the dramatist’s work with the literary source are considered. The libretto texts that are not introduced in the novel and their sources are revealed; the logics of the reference of the “The Idiot” opera creators to Dostoevsky’s meta-text and the legacy of other authors in the context of artistic conception are explained. The article determines the functions of the characters of the first and second action plan, gives their brief description and indicates their role in the dramaturgy of the opera

“The Song of Selling Olives”: Acoustic Experience and Cantonese Identity in Canton, Hong Kong, and Macau across the Great Divide of 1949

This essay looks into the cultural identity and acoustic experience shared among Canton, Hong Kong, and Macau through “The Song of Selling Olives,” a piece from Siu Yuet Pak – a 1950 Cantonese opera adaptation of Flame of Lust, a 1948 story broadcasted in Canton (as Guangzhou was known in the Republican era) that soon become a household name across the region. By means of archival research and close-reading, I will explicate ways in which the song appropriates the cultural icon of Siu Yuet-pak and re-invents the tradition of “selling olives,” projecting the boundary-crossing experience among the three Cantonese-speaking areas in a time of frequent exchanges, occasional competition, and potential disconnection from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.

Two Beijing Spoken Drama Comedies Featuring Social Critique Seen in the Summer of 2014

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: TWO BEIJING SPOKEN DRAMA COMEDIES FEATURING SOCIAL CRITIQUE SEEN IN THE SUMMER OF 2014 JING SHEN Eckerd College, USA In the summer of 2014 I had the chance to see performances of two spoken drama (huaju 話劇) comedies in Beijing: Zhao ge laopo xian yaohao 找個老婆先搖號 (To find a wife, first draw lots), staged by Leizile Xiaogongchang 雷子樂笑工廠 (Leizile laugh factory; a.k.a. Alan’s Studio),1 and Yangtai 陽台 (Balcony), staged by DaDao Wenhua 大道文化 (DaDao culture).2 Although the two plays used different types of stagecraft and actors, they both investigate similar social issues in contemporary China at the same time that they provide entertainment. Zhao ge laopo xian yaohao can be read as an irreverent parody of Lao She’s 老舍 (1899–1966) Beijing-flavored classic Luotuo Xiangzi 駱駝祥子 (Rickshaw Boy).3 In the play a migrant worker named Bei Shangguang 北上廣,4 riding a bicycle absentmindedly , runs into a car driven by a huge Beijing girl, Gong Linna 宫臨娜.5 She develops a crush on this migrant worker at first sight, although he is not interested in her at all. As if destined, they encounter again in a library in which he is hiding from his fiancée’s family, and meet a third time yet when they happen to sit next 1 This performance group was founded in 2007. In the introduction on their official website (http://news.cuctv.com/news_9485.html; accessed March 3, 2016), there is the claim that they have produced 46 works with a total of over 2,000 performances. A list of municipal grants they have won is also given. 2 They were founded in 1994. For an official introduction to the company, see the three postings at http://www.dadaowh.com/about/ (accessed March 3, 2016), where the claim is made that their eight comedies and one musical have had a total of more than 600 performances. You can also see that Yangtai premiered in 2005 and that there have been three different editions distinguished by the version of Chinese used (Standard Chinese, Sichuanese, Yunnanese), a pedagogical (jiaoxue 教學) edition, a youth (qingchun 青春) edition, and an invited stars (mingxing jiameng 明 星加盟) edition. A separate posting on Yangtai performances in 2013 (http://www.dadaowh.com/ view.asp?/661.html; accessed March 3, 2016) also mentions a new luxury (haohua 豪華) edition. Lectures about performing the play have been posted online (http://open.163.com/movie/2012/ 10/8/K/M8DJ5DLTB_M8DJ5J38K.html; accessed March 3, 2016). 3 Interestingly, that summer also saw the premiere of a western opera version of Luotuo Xiangzi. See Xiong Yuqing, “‘Rickshaw Boy’: Classic Chinese novel gets opera adaptation,” Global Times, May 21, 2014 (http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/861512.shtml; accessed March 3, 2016). 4 These three characters are commonly used to represent the three biggest, most commercial cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. 5 Gong is a fairly rare surname and literally means “palace.” Na connotes feminine charm, but lin, although it means “approach,” might stress how far she is from having feminine charm. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 35.1 (July 2016): 70–74© The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2016 DOI 10.1080/01937774.2016.1183328 to each other on a flight. Gong Linna, whose deceased father bequeathed her a generous legacy, owns a big rental company, in which Dou Wentao 豆文濤6 is an administrative manager (xingzheng zhuguan 行政主管). Dou claims that Gong’s father had agreed to let him marry her, but she only has eyes for Bei Shangguang, who looks for a job and ends up working in her company. She tries hard to seduce Bei and is successful, but he regrets having sex with her. She then feigns pregnancy to pressure him to marry her. Unlike Xiangzi, however, he runs away, and she is lovesick . In the end, touched by her devotion, Bei agrees to marry her, although he is still not attracted to her. This might sound like a pretty serious story, but absurd touches, such as random characters played by the same actor doing odd things (e.g., burns his own hand with a cigarette, mimes riding a bike), keep the tone from getting too serious. Yangtai, directed and co...

Foreword

Foreword

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Foreword

Thought, Sound, Silence, Music: "The Turn of the Screw" from Henry James to Benjamin Britten

Although Henry James was always alert to speech and dialogue, his achievement derives largely from the study of human psychology and character, and he is often perceived as a “writer of thought.” The essence of Jamesian style has found an apt correlative in musical discourse and, more specifically, in the language and conventions of opera. James’ The Turn of the Screw evidences an interest in the physical qualities of characters’ speech and recurrently resorts to musical or performative imagery. Silence, however, is at the heart of the novella: Victorian sexual taboo, secrecry shrouding past events, the firstperson narrator’s self-censorship and above all, the soundless presence of the ghostly. Benjamin Britten’s opera adaptation is faithful to James’ text, yet introducing fascinating elements: the definite musical character of the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel; their presence on stage frees them from the constraint of the Governess’ narrative filter in the source text; the opera’s focus on Quint, rather than the Governess, sets the homoerotic theme into relief and even suggests the ghost as the origin of the narration.

Beverly Lyon Clark. The Afterlife of “Little Women”

Beverly Lyon Clark. <i>The Afterlife of “Little Women”</i>

“Partout et Nulle Part”: Apollinaire's Body after the War

“Partout Et Nulle Part”:Apollinaire’s Body After the War Effie Rentzou (bio) On 26 November 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire stood backstage at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier in Paris. Apollinaire—alias for Guglielmo Alberto Wladimiro Alessandro Apollinare de Kostrowitzky, born to a Polish mother and to an unknown father, a naturalized French citizen for just over a year and a half, bearing a head wound from a shell in the trenches of the Great War (World War I), wearing his Croix de la guerre on his chest and a leather band around his forehead to hold his skull together after a trepanning operation—waited while actor Pierre Bertin read his lecture “L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes” (“The New Spirit and the Poets”). The lecture would be published in Le Mercure de France a year later, on 1 December 1918, after Apollinaire’s premature death. Its opening lines succinctly summarize the core of the argument but also set an assured, prophetic tone for the whole text: “The new spirit which will dominate the poetry of the entire world has nowhere come to light as it has in France.”1 The text, written and perceived as a manifesto, is inescapably overdetermined by the war: it is a text written during the Great War, informed by the war in both its aesthetic and ideological positions, and at the same time evades the war as it projects to the future—the future of peace. What is theorized in the text—the personal and the historical, the aesthetic and the political—finds its paradigmatic poetic pendant in a work that stands alone within Apollinaire’s production: the play Les Mamelles de Tirésias—Drame surréaliste (The Mammaries of Tiresias—A Surrealist Drama). Presented to the public in 1918, this is Apollinaire’s only theatrical text performed during his lifetime. A multimedia spectacle combining text, music, and visual arts, the play drew elements from popular culture—the circus, guignol, la fête foraine (fun fair; i.e., carnival)—as well as cinema and the theatrical tradition, in order to address a burning national issue: falling birthrates. Together, the essay and the play reflect and deflect [End Page 557] the experience of the war to epitomize a specific vision of the avant-garde. “L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes” and Les Mamelles de Tirésias, however, are rarely considered in discussions of the avant-garde at the close of World War I. Indeed, the play obtained an oddball position within Apollinaire’s oeuvre almost from the beginning—a status that it still maintains, as few critical works are dedicated to it and performances are rare, notwithstanding Francis Poulenc’s 1947 opera adaptation.2 The essay, while it was widely disseminated at the time and marked decisively the new avant-garde generation rising in the early 1920s,3 is today seldom revisited within the general frame of the study of the avant-garde. Seen more as a testimony to Apollinaire’s own poetics and ambitions, the essay has joined the fate of the play: they stand on their own and, despite Apollinaire’s central role as a connecting node of different avant-garde currents, they are not part of a critical discussion of the bourgeoning avant-garde activity during the last phase of the war. Dada’s birth, futurism’s entanglement with nationalist politics and belligerence, and surrealism’s emergence from the alternative reality of shell-shocked soldiers dominate our understanding of the European avant-garde in 1918. What I propose is a parallel reading of Apollinaire’s two texts that offers a different standpoint from which to consider the avant-garde in this specific historical moment of war. Apollinaire’s late work embodies the extreme violence of the war, in the metaphorical and the literal senses: Apollinaire’s literary somatization of war, spurring from his real-life mutilation in the trenches, counteracts the violence imposed by ideology, and inverts it through a series of body-related representations, into a “new spirit.” It is a process that merges the deeply personal with the impasses of war but also its governing political ideologies, nationalism and colonialism. I argue thus that “L’Esprit nouveau et...

Adaptation as Hospitality: Shanghai Theatre Academy Winter Institute 2013 Performance Series

The productions of the Shanghai Theatre Academy Winter Institute 2013 performance series ranged from a Yue opera adaptation of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea to modern dance theatre to an exhibition by students. Each production worked in a unique way within the framework of the encounter between foreign and local, guest and host. Together they offered a vision of cross-cultural theatrical exchange that is reconstitutive and inclusionary.

Bodas de sangre de Federico García Lorca en las tablas húngaras. Algunas representaciones memorables entre 1957-2014

The House of Bernarda Alba was the first play of Federico Garcia Lorca that was staged by a Hungarian company in 1955. Hungarian directors followed with close attention the dramas of the Andalusian playwright and two years later, in 1957, the Hungarian National Theater included on its program another play of Lorca, Blood Wedding, written in 1933. Since then, the popularity of this drama on Hungarian stages has not diminished at all, it also inspired dance and opera adaptations. Recently, in the 2013-2014 season, Magyar Színház theater has also staged this play. The aim of this paper, which has been inspired by the aforementioned premiere, is to offer an overview of the Hungarian reception of Blood Wedding, highlighting some important productions of the past six decades.

Shakespeare on the Peking Opera Stage

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Successful Peking Opera adaptations of Shakespeare1 have attracted interest of theater-goers, both enthusiasts and connoisseurs, who have been able to approach Shakespeare the form that they like and are used to. For the intermingling elements of traditional Chinese opera and Shakespearean themes or stories, on another level, some adaptations have received applause from Shakespeare lovers, who enjoy the formal attractions of Peking Opera through the familiar Shakespeare stories. For such contrastive elements as Shakespeare and Chinese opera to co-exist the end product, the adaptation must be transforming process, which for each element to be valid the product, it must also be malleable. In all the adaptation cases, transformation has taken place on both sides of the adaptation: the source text and the adapting form. Thus, our concerns about such adaptations should go beyond the traditionalist suspect about Shakespeare's adaptability Peking Opera or the bardolatrist doubt that Peking Opera adaptation of Shakespeare can still be Shakespeare. What we want to ask is what ways transformation can be viable the intertextual practice of cross-cultural, cross-generic, and cross-media adaptation.Intertextuality Chinese Adaptation of ShakespeareHere I would see an adaptation as text and borrow the Kristeva's term of intertexuality as any text is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality (36) and appropriate the term evaluating Shakespeare adaptations traditional Chinese opera form. On the one hand, the key notion the Kristevan term of intertexuality is applicable to inter-cultural adaptation. The notion must be elaborated, on the other hand, order for it to be fully usable cultural context which cultural forms, such as Chinese drama and especially Peking Opera, have been influenced by hetero-philosophical conceptions of life and drama. When we read adaptations as texts, we detect both axes2 of the textual formation Peking opera adaptations: the author-reader connection through the bridging by the adapting artists between Shakespeare's foreign text and Chinese audiences and the text-to-text connection between Shakespeare's work and the Chinese product different genre. The gap between the author and the text, as translated or adapted, has been bridged by the adapter, who is actually the speaker to contemporary audience the Peking opera theatre. This essay will examine how the Chinese adaptations transform both the Shakespearean text and the opera form.To begin with, Peking Opera adapters must deal with the contrastive notions Shakespeare's drama and Chinese opera before they look for the common ground or similarities for viable way of integrating these hetero-natured elements. They demonstrate diverse understandings of the relationship between life and drama and thus use different dramaturgical ways of representation. The Peking Opera tells stories and represents life by exteriorizing the interior, that is, emotions of characters while Shakespeare's plays are comparatively more realistic and mimic life closed structure. This contrast reflects the different notions of drama. The Chinese dramatic aesthetics stresses poetic expressions of life. As result, ways of expression or formal nuances are more important than the or what is expressed; whereas, western drama as influenced by Aristotle's poetics, with Shakespeare as the best exemplar, imitate life realistic representations. A Chinese tragedy, for example, is not to engender fear and pity, but teaches moral lesson with or without the hero's death. Accordingly, death and sadness or other strong emotions are symbolically represented with dances, singings, acrobatics, and martial arts so that audiences are always fascinated by the artistic performances. As put by Lan, in Chinese tragedies, the emotions are excited by the outer style (the exquisite techniques) so that formal aesthetics is more appreciated than the content (591). …

The Legend of Pyramus und Thisbe as Interpreted by Pietro Bianchi

Abstract The legend of Pyramus and Thisbe has been a popular theme in art, poetry and music alike, from antiquity onwards. Its spectacular drama-poetic, musical, ballet and opera adaptations increased throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. The author roughly characterizes the features of artworks created in different periods, and specifies with what implications in content, under what sort of inspiration Bianchi represented the story in his Budapest drawing, which was formerly unidentified both for its master and its subject-matter.

The film-opera Aida (1953): intermediality and operatics

This article offers an intermedial analysis of the film-opera Aida (dir. Clemente Fracassi, 1953) within the context of opera adaptation in Italian cinema. Drawing on theories of intermediality developed by Wolf and Rajewsky, it adopts and applies the intermedial subcategories of medial transposition, plurimediality and intermedial reference to the study of film-operas. By comparing the film Aida with the libretto and the score of Verdi's opera, the article first considers the medial transpositions of the text as well as the music. In a second layer of analysis, it examines plurimediality and intermedial references in the film-opera in order to evaluate the integration of operatic elements into the film. The article concludes that the film-opera Aida represents a hybrid work of art situated between opera and cinema. Instead of attempting to record the opera in a naturalistic way, Fracassi presents an opera with filmic means, also by simulating and partially recreating operatic characteristics within the film's discourse. By demonstrating that Aida indeed offers a creative and cinematographically innovative adaptation of the opera's libretto and score, the article not only re-evaluates this film-opera, but additionally highlights the usefulness of the intermedial approach for the analysis of opera adaptations.

Hear Jane sing: narrative authority in two musical versions of Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre focuses heavily on the development of the protagonist's voice, as the reader can trace the young Jane's transition from a vulnerable gothic heroine to an authoritative autobiographical narrator. Film adaptations of the novel often fail to convey this transition due to the inability of the film-maker to successfully incorporate Jane's narration into the piece. Two recent musical versions of Jane Eyre present interesting solutions to this problem; the ability to layer voices through song, along with the potential for musical commentary as opposed to voice-over, allows for innovative approaches to rectifying the problems regarding Jane's narration in other media. However, although the stage musical version by John Caird and Paul Gordon and the chamber opera adaptation by Michael Berkeley and David Malouf both attempt to preserve Jane's narrative authority, the writers are unable to fully capture the novelistic nuances of the heroine's development from abused orphan to omniscient storyteller.

In Defence of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production

In Defence of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production