|
|
Article: Words into music: Novelist Margaret Atwood and the art of the opera librettist.(Interview)
- Article from:
- Opera Canada
- Article date:
- June 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Opera Canada Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
W. H. Auden was a ruthless editor of his own poetry, who in later life suppressed many early poems he no longer found worthy. He took an even more pitiless attitude towards his texts for opera, though he expected others to do the pruning. The verses of a libretto, he wrote, "have their moment of glory, the moment when they suggest to [the composer] a certain melody. Once that is over, they are as expendable as infantry to a Chinese general: they must efface themselves and cease to care what happens to them."
Margaret Atwood prefers to think in terms of a "coat-hanger for the composer to make the rest of the thing hang on. If it's a bad coat-hanger, that will be ...