adapting opera
becca marriott
It all began in 2012, when I was approached by Adam Spreadbury Maher, the then artistic director of the King’s Head Theatre, and asked if I would like to work on a new adaptation of La Bohéme. Since co-creating and writing the new English libretto for this Olivier Award nominated opera, I have created adaptations of, La Serva Padrona, Tosca, La Traviata, Cosi fan tutte, and with The Opera Makers, I am working on a radical new version of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci - The Clowns, as well as Hopes & Fears, an intertwining of some of Debussy’s most beautiful music to tell the stories of two women with cancer.
But where does one start with adaptation in order to keep the core of a composer and their original librettist’s message, while at the same time, rocketing a work into a more modern, relatable context?
Well…the most important thing is to find the universal story at the heart of a work.
For example: Un Ballo in Maschera is just a story about a man who falls for his best friend’s wife, and a wife who, though she desperately loves her husband’s best friend, is unshakeably loyal to the man she married. Bohème is a coming of age story about a boy who falls for a girl from a different class. Tosca is a story about a woman who would do anything to save the life of the man she loves. La Traviata is about a woman who, although she loves Alfredo, realises she cannot be with him because she will ruin his life.
There is nothing “traditional” or “old fashioned” or “outdated” about these narratives. In fact, they turn up time and time again in television dramas, soaps and even sitcoms.
The more difficult challenges for the would-be opera adaptor are the anachronisms. If you want to update Traviata for example, what is a courtesan in 2021? In Bohème Mimi dies of TB, the disease of the poor and deprived. What are the social illnesses killing people in the new(ish) millennium? Really, these “problems” should not need “solving” because they are what will have drawn a good adaptor to an opera in the first place.
For example, when adapting Bohème, the story of addiction we wanted to tell in order to move twenty-first century audiences was part of the lure of La bohème. TB killed poor desperate people in the nineteenth century - heroine addiction is killing the same strata people today.
If the story is respected in these two ways, you can chop and change opera a considerable amount without losing the composer’s intentions; but you need to really explore the themes and plots of the piece - the universal aspects and the more specific ones.
