A big subject, ernani.

For centuries, opera composers have been happy to chose stories that are already well known, and if they already have a proven stage-worthiness, then theoretically so much the better. It could be, however, that the Bard is too big for opera: his work has a universality which enables it to speak to different people and different times as their contemporary: as times move on, so does he, and his work is reinterpreted. Shakespearean opera, unless it's very great, gets bogged down in the era for which it was composed: obvious exceptions are the two late Verdi masterpieces, and Britten's MND, which achieves an even more difficult feat by using the original words, albeit in a masterfully condensed and restructured text.

There must be literally scores of operas based on his plays, even though there are many which have yet to be used: unsurprisingly, it's the most performed plays which turn up most often as operas, too. I suppose we'll need to make a list....

[At some point it might be worth digressing into works which use Shakespeare as a mythology (an obvious example being Tippett's Knot Garden, with its references to The Tempest) or works which use his plots as a springboard for new works (West Side Story squeezing in there).]

Good question, marty: not always, but perhaps that's at least partly because it was written to a very tight deadline, and there are sections which do seem to have - shall we say - a sense of the formulaic about them (the lovers' quarrel scene a possible example....)

A Tempest question that's bound to arise when we come to libretti: does Adès's version lose or gain by having words that aren't Shakespeare's?

I've toyed with a libretto based on one of the plays that hasn't been done before for some time, but shan't say which for now.

Talking of witches, I've recently heard Bloch's operatic version of the Scottish Play which was very different to what I'd expected, turning what I've always thought of as a vivid, vicious and violent piece into something far more dreamlike and misty, a sort of short-haired cousin of Pelléas: I've long known about the 1934 version by Lawrence Collingwood (probably best remembered now as a conductor), but have never heard a note. Bearing in mind that he took himself of to St. Petersburg in 1912 and studied with Glazunov and Steinberg amongst others, Ive always imagined that it might be a more forceful piece.

There are a few operas which sound Shakespearean, but aren't: Walton's Troilus and Cressida takes Chaucer's very different version as its starting point, and Britten's The Rape of Lucretia is founded on the play by André Obey, not the long narrative poem.

A fascinating subject, ernani, and one which has been on my mind in considering yesterday's Opera Quiz extracts. As a big fan of Verdi, I'm interested in his four* Shakespeare operas. It has been said before that Verdi's Macbeth isn't a patch on the play, that Othello is a great play and Otello just as great an opera, whereas Verdi's Falstaff is a greater stagework than The Merry Wives of Windsor, and I'd tend to agree with that assessment. Of course, one could argue that Macbeth is a greater play than The Merry Wives in the first place and therefore harder for Verdi's opera to compare favourably. I've seen Macbeth (the opera) three times over the past year (admittedly one concert performance and one semi-staged) but think that, compared to other early Verdi works, it shows a considerable advancement in his writing, especially for the semi-parlando duets for Macbeth and Lady M. I've a tremendous admiration for Othello in both forms - witnessing the psychological destruction of Othello can be just as devastating in the opera house (when convincingly portrayed by the likes of Domingo, whose acting takes on Shakespearean proportions) as in the theatre. I find Verdi's scenes between Othello and Iago as skilful in marking changes of mood as Iago's manipulation begins as the Bard's.
Falstaff is a great piece of theatre and all the more remarkable that a composer should choose to end his career writing in a genre which rarely featured in his work (sure, there was the early Donizettian comic opera Un giorno di regno, and the black humour of Un Ballo in Maschera; the nearest to the farcical comedy in Falstaff is probably Fra Melitone's scenes in La Forza del Destino).  The genial wit, the twinkle in the old man's eye (Falstaff's, but Verdi's too), plus the ability to mock oneself/ not take life too seriously is a glorious summation of his life and work.


*'Four? What could he possibly mean?' I'm thinking of his unwritten opera on King Lear, which was the subject of some discussion in the Quiz almost a year ago.

In theory I think there is a lot to be said for not using Shakespeare's own words on the general grounds that they don't leave anything for any possible music to 'complete' ('comment on' is a different matter) but on the merits of Meredith Oakes' libretto for The Tempest ... Oh ...   Nmg Mng Mneu Ng Nnphh.

Just googling "Winter's Tale" and "Opera" produced these (to me) unknown quantities, from this page.

Barbieri, Carlo Emanuele (1822-1867) Perdita, opera, 1865.

Boesmans, Philippe. (b.1936) Wintermärchen.

Bruch, Max (1838-1920) Hermione, opera, 1872

Harbison, John (b. 1938) Winter's Tale. libretto and opera (1984/91)

Nesvera, Josef (1842-1914) Perdita (Winter's Tale), opera, 1892-93 Bereny, 1898


There are links to some of the other late plays on that same page.

Mediocre source material tends to make for better operas: hence, one masterpiece, one creditable work and one durable warhorse (Nicolai) from the cheap and nasty cash-in that is 'Merry Wives Of Windsor'. 

Significantly, no opera based on Lear has entered the mainstream repertoire (never heard Reimann's effort, but would be interested to): Debussy couldn't get his effort off the starting blocks  and Verdi's didn't even get to the still-born stage. Is there something about the hugeness of the play (any composer would be daunted by the challenge of creating music for the storm scene) that makes composers falter in their tracks?

Sidebar to this, I think King Lear is some distance from being Shakespeare's masterpiece: in fact, I'd say it's one of those rare instances where the bard's reach exceeded his grasp.  A qualified failure, in fact.