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Article: High Notes; In a bid to win new fans, opera companies are turning to 20th-century fiction for inspiration--and, indeed, relevance.
- Article from:
- Newsweek International
- Article date:
- June 6, 2005
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Byline: Tara Pepper
When Lorin Maazel, the charismatic director of the New York Philharmonic, was mulling the possibility of writing his first opera, he went back to great 20th-century literature in search of a subject. "I reread [George's Orwell's] '1984' and felt it had all the ingredients for opera, and that it would stimulate my imagination as a composer," he says. The work premiered May 3 at London's Royal Opera House, with a dark, imaginative set by director Robert Lepage. Yet Maazel's "1984" remains one of only a handful of modern operas that have drawn on contemporary writing. "It's immensely powerful to know that the piece onstage really matters now in ...
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